Tag: rape

Immediate Relief from Family Trauma

From “The Thought Field”, Volume 18 Issue 4

(photo not of actual client)

 

TFT Can Soften Life’s Traumas and Begin Healing

By Jennifer Harp, TFT-Dx

(Client name changed to Sara)

Sara is a 45 year old mother of two daughters, age 15 and age 13 as well as one son, age 17. She resides in Wyoming with her live in boyfriend and her daughters. Her son resides with his biological father in Florida.

Sara has endured a lengthy history of sexual, physical, emotional and mental abuse at the hands of her biological father from ages 5-18. She was later assaulted physically by numerous boyfriends as an adult. Her ex-husband, raped her on numerous occasions.

Her grief was compounded 8 months ago when she was told by her daughter that her son sexually molested her on a visit to Florida last summer. Her son is currently undergoing criminal proceedings for the assault. Sara sought counseling 5 months ago to assist her in managing her feelings of despair, shame and anger.

In working with her, I utilized the algorithm of complex trauma with anger and guilt to address her thought field of the perpetration of her daughter by her son.

I chose the algorithm for two reasons 1.) it was my first time using TFT in my own practice and I was more confident with the technique 2.) I thought that this would be a good place to begin with her symptoms of intense trauma as the algorithms have been tested and proven with so many clients.

Prior to going through the sequence, her SUDS level was a 10 on a scale of 1-10. After the first time of using the tapping sequence she experienced a reduction in SUDS to an 8. At this time, we corrected for specific reversal by adding the karate chop to the beginning of the sequence. After this process her SUDS dropped to a 5.

Another correction for recurring reversal was added to the sequence by rubbing the sore spot, this dropped the SUDS to a 2. The 9 gamut sequence was provided and then repeated the sequence of complex trauma with anger and guilt. To finish a floor to ceiling eye roll was facilitated. Sara’s final SUDS level was a 1.

No identifiable toxins were detected with Sara.

Upon administering this treatment, Sara commented that the technique was “unbelievable.” It took her several minutes to be able to identify her final SUDS level as she “could not feel it anymore.” Sara continues to tap on a daily basis with various algorithms as required for her symptoms.

Sara was the first client that I had utilized the TFT techniques with. It was remarkable the immediate relief that she felt in 7 minutes of TFT therapy that she did not receive in 2 months of cognitive behavioral therapy prior to the algorithms.

Sara and I frequently tap in session; I use both TFT diagnostic and algorithms to address her symptomology.

Jennifer Harp LPC-850, Northern Star Counseling, LLC, Cheyenne, WY 82001 Office: (307) 637-7906

Eliminating Severe Effects of Rape

Thought Field, Vol 1 Issue 1

Beliefs, Attitudes and TFT

Fred P. Gallo, Ph.D., Hermitage, PA

In “Transcending Painful Memories: and the emergence of the new psychotherapies”, I reported on one of my first cases of successfully applying TFT. I used the pseudonym of Barbara in the section on Rape Trauma. At age thirteen Barbara was raped while on a date with an eighteen year old boyfriend. The trauma continued to cause her suffering well into her thirties.

Additionally Barbara had a drug and alcohol problem, suffered severe bouts of depression with suicidal intent, and evidenced a number of other symptoms subsumed under diagnoses such as major depression, dysthymic disorder, bipolar disorder, poly-substance dependence, and borderline personality disorder.

She had received treatment at a number of facilities, both outpatient and inpatient, and she was not doing well at all when I first saw her.

When Barbara discussed the rape with me, she definitely appeared to be “reliving” the event to some extent. She cried deeply and evidenced profound remorse and referred to herself in the most negative of terms.

At first I interrupted the reliving episode by having her attend to the external environment by describing what she saw heard, smelled, tactually felt, etc. After she calmed down, I told her that I was working with a technique that might help to relieve the pain that she felt each time that she thought about this event. I asked her if she would be willing to give it a try, and she agreed.

Within several minutes of treating her for psychological reversal and using the basic trauma algorithm, Barbara no longer felt emotional pain while reviewing the memory. What amazed me even more so at the time, however, was the fact that Barbara’s beliefs about herself and the incident were simultaneously transformed.

For example, I asked her what she thought about the event and she replied in an almost casual tone that it was “just something that happened when I was a kid”. I even pushed her on this to test the reality of the transformation by asking with an accusing tone, “Don’t you think that you were to blame? Don’t you think it was your fault?” Her response to me was an unshaken and softly stated, “No, I don’t think I was to blame. I was just a kid.”

I couldn’t believe it. Just moments previously she had gone on about what a no-good so and so she was, and now she was doing an about face! How could this happen in an instant?

I saw her about a week after the treatment and she reported that she continued to not feel bothered about the rape. She told me that she tested this out at times over the week by thinking about the rape, and she did not feel any distress. That was about two years ago and I know that Barbara has continued to do well, since I have had intermittent contacts with her concerning other issues in her life.

As I reported in the article, Barbara was not instantaneously and totally cured, even though the traumatic memory was completely cured within a brief period of time (or even outside of time, depending on how one thinks about such things). While relieving the trauma certainly seemed to have a positive ripple effect throughout Barbara’s life, I should note that I also taught her treatments for addictive urges, anxiety and depression. These treatments were mostly employed during therapy sessions, although she did practice the algorithms at times on her own when she remembered to do so.

Today Barbara is not dependent on drugs and alcohol and her self esteem appears to be on the rise. She went on to complete an undergraduate degree in psychology, is now working on a graduate degree in social work, and is holding a responsible job in the field.


TFT After Brutal Rape of 13-Year-Old

Dr. Roger Callahan, founder of Thought Field Therapy, wrote the following in the newsletter “The Thought Field”, Volume 6, Issue 4:

A health care professional became very interested in my work when she observed obvious improvements in some of her patients and herself as a result of TFT done by a colleague. After observing such events over a period of two years, she began to wonder if TFT might be able to help her daughter who had been raped two years earlier when she was only 13 years old. Lenore (a fictitious name) had been in psychotherapy for two years with a very dedicated psychotherapist. Despite the fine efforts of the therapist, Lenore was still suffering terribly.

The possibility did not initially occur to the mother that TFT might help her daughter’s condition since her many disturbances were clearly due to a terrible reality situation. Believing the conventional view, she assumed that the problem would have to be treated gradually over a period of years and that a rapid treatment could not possibly have a good effect on such a terrible and real situation.

Prior to the rape Lenore was a very sociable, happy, and generally outstanding child. Lenore was doing very well in school and was doing well in a number of ways.

After the rape, Lenore became a completely different youngster. She began to overeat and purge. She constantly obsessed about the rape and had regular severe nightmares. Formerly a superb student, she became a very poor one. She was hospitalized in an institution specializing in eating disorders. Unfortunately, she became worse while in the hospital and began cutting herself and taking laxatives. Continue reading “TFT After Brutal Rape of 13-Year-Old”

TFT Relieves Severe Traumas of Rape

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 “TFT Relieves Severe Traumas of Rape”

TFT Heals 60-Year Old Trauma from Rape

Photo--Woman CryingMy name is Rosemarie Solarz. I am currently seventy years old. I would like to share with you a very traumatic experience I had at 10 years old.

My parents went out for a New Years eve dance in town and left my brother and I with a neighbor’s son who was sixteen years old. He told my brother and I (who was 9 at the time) that he wanted to teach us a new game we could all play.

For us it sounded like fun. But it wasn’t. He started doing things we didn’t like and we did not want to play anymore and began to get scared. Before I knew it, he had raped me.

I remember I did not cry because I did not know what had just happened to me. Back then, words like rape were not mentioned. All I could remember the rest of the evening was I hurt and did not feel good so I went to my bedroom and stayed until my parents came home.

The memory of that horrible experience changed the rest of my life. I never had any lasting, healthy relationships, low self-image, worked hard to have people like me, gained weight, self-sabotaged myself and finally a broken marriage to make me feel even more inadequate!

Those memories were stored so deep in my subconscious that I was in my mid-forties before they revealed their ugly self. I had an opportunity to attend a healing mass at my church one evening and the priest that was conducting the healing part whispered in my ear had I been sexually abused by my father.

I just froze! Then I began to shake. Tears came to my eyes. He laid his hand on my shoulder to calm me and said to come see him the next day and talk about. I never cried so hard in my life. The release was more than I could bear, just to have it come out.

He gave me the name of a counselor to go to. I took advantage of many opportunities to seek help. However, I reached the point where I felt I had worked through everything and did not need to go on further.

How wrong I was! For some unknown reason I would shy away from any conversations that would pertain to rape, or anything that had to do with intimacy. Never wanted to be around men and I still felt shame.

However, recently my eldest daughter, Christina Mayhew, completed Dr. Roger Callahan’s TFT class in California and helped clean out all the old baggage I was still carrying around. She taught me how to use the Trauma and shame algorithm technique in order to free me of the remaining pain I felt.

I cannot express strongly enough just how much it has helped me. The experience of this technique is nothing short of a miracle in my opinion. The technique took us no more than ten, maybe twelve minutes. I pray that anyone else going through trauma of any kind will seek out this program in order to receive the complete healing they deserve!