I was gratified recently to find that my diary about telling veterans about EFT made the front page. There was some good discussion going on it, but then somebody posted a comment about how they had googled "EFT" and "cult" and then somebody else piled on and insulted me. So, forgive me, but I have to rant in an effort to undo the damage that was done.
Here is the original posting with comments. My response is below the fold.
http://www.dailykos.com/...
In the interest of full disclosure, let me say that I personally do not practice EFT on anybody but myself. I have been disabled since 1999 and no longer work, as I did then, as an LCSW specializing in trauma therapy from a constructivist orientation. I did not encounter EFT until after I stopped working, at which time it proved more efficacious for alleviating my own reactivated trauma symptoms than any other method I had ever encountered in my own years of therapy or my professional training. The fact that anyone can learn the basics free and can easily obtain free copies of the training DVDs through someone who owns them if they are interested in learning more is what prompted me to post my original diary.
Additionally, I worked for four years to achieve ordination, thinking that when I was able to strengthen myself to a degree that I could perhaps again apply my skills to helping others, I would be able to do so under the rubric of "ministerial counseling"--maybe by offering an occasional free EFT workshop for veterans so I could do something--and also be in a position to encourage them to go see a full-time practicing therapist in my area if, in my professional judgment, they were not already under someone's care and needed to be. So, in this context, here's the comment that set me off:
I googled "EFT" and "cult" by notksanymore, Mon Nov 17, 2008 at 12:29:33 PM EST (1+ / 0-)
For what it's worth, here's what
http://forum.rickross.com/...
Monica Pignotti was a practitioner of TFT and VT. She has just published an insightful, honest revelation of her work with Roger Callahan with regard to Thought Field Therapy. Thought Field Therapy: A Former Insider's Experience
TFT and its direct offshoot Gary Craig's EFT are both fraudulent and bogus derivations based upon Cognitive Bahavioral Therapy. The problem is that these techinques are applied liberally to everything from mental stress to physical ailments. The potential for a patient to seek out these "non-treatments" for legitimate conditions puts them at a severe risk.
Most states regulate psychological practices, however, these TFT / EFT practitioners often use the protection of being an "ordained minister" to conduct their business.
Should you encounter a person embarking on this course, please refer them to the many good mental health resources available in almost all municipalities.
Don't let another person suffer needlessly under this bogus therapy.
There is a big placebo effect for some people with practices like this. If people feel better, great, but there are other therapies that work without the risks of not working with a licensed professional.
To which I replied:
This is ridiculous! I have to rant... (0+ / 0-)
This writer doesn't even know what Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is. There is no way in hell EFT could be considered a "bogus derivation[s]" of CBT!
Look at this from that forum you linked to:
As Vigilent's observation
Quote:
Most states regulate psychological practices, however, these TFT / EFT practitioners often use the protection of being an "ordained minister" to conduct their business.
We can only conclude it is because God forgives, but the Arizona Board of Psychologist Examiners and other such regulatory agencies do not.
This is bullshit. Those practicing EFT who are not doing it as licensed psychotherapists or physicians (and many of them are) obtain ordination not because it has anything to do with God but because ordination allows them to offer therapies in the context of counseling people that have not yet been accepted into mainstream practice without fear of being sued by licensing boards. (Do you have any idea what kind of hoops and how much expense is required to get and stay licensed? Some opt to let their licenses lapse, for any number of reasons having nothing to do with lack of expertise.)
Therapies like acupuncture or Reiki (nurses now routinely practice it under the name of "Healing Touch") or even chiropractic were once thought bizarre and forbidden for licensed professionals to offer (I won't even mention the turf-war implications) but now are incorporated into mainstream medical practice. Without someone in the forefront trying untested methods, new treatments would never be developed, eventually studied, and refined.
Besides, anyone informed as to how scientific research is actually done these days (including who funds it and what their ulterior--profit--motives are) would not dismiss out of hand a technique that has not yet been proven through research to be efficacious; to dismiss a technique before it is adequately researched is simply unscientific. When someone has coughed up the money to do double-blind studies that prove EFT is bogus, then tell me about it. I mean, lookit: How many decades did Freud and his progeny practice psychoanalysis, and when was it proven to work or not work?
As with any innovation, there is a lag between its introduction and its final acceptance as legitimate. Even then, solid and replicated research is often ignored by the mainstream community of whatevers. Like the physician who, instead of admitting he doesn't know, tells his patients that glucosamine is a worthless treatment for arthritis because he's got this set bias against anything non-pharmaceutical and hasn't taken the time to read the scientific research published in his own medical journals that proves otherwise.
Yes, it's important that practitioners be skilled and ethical. When using EFT as a self-help technique, most individuals self-regulate and stop doing it if they don't think it works or if issues arise that convince them they need to get professional help. Take hypnosis: there are those who are skilled and ethical in its use and dumb kids who play with it to try to get girls to go to bed with them. Then there are those who use autohypnosis (self hypnosis), which many therapists teach to their patients to give them a means of alleviating pain and distress whenever it arises outside of the office. Like EFT, the basics are easy and, when used on oneself, more often helpful than not.
I posted this diary to help put into the hands of people who are suffering a means of getting some relief, especially because (as in the case of our veterans, with which I am most concerned) they are so often failed by a mental health system that's supposed to care about them. A system that until very recently insisted that Gulf War Syndrome was essentially PTSD, for chrissake! I received the DVA training where we trauma therapists were told that all kinds of research had been done that suggested only that these very ill veterans were suffering from stress disorders and to treat them accordingly. The physical symptoms were not part of the diagnostic criteria for PTSD, so they were dismissed by many as simply imaginary--even those therapists who cared and fought hard to get those veterans the disability status they needed and deserved. So what was that in the news lately about veterans' confirming information being shredded? The long history of vets being denied disability because, in large numbers, their actual service-connected PTSD was rather conveniently misdiagnosed as a pre-existing personality disorder?
I don't care how great a duly licensed psychotherapist is, if the diagnosis and the understanding of the disorder is wrong, and the treatment is targeted toward the wrong disorder and psychotropic drugs are heavily prescribed, then that big high muckety muck licensed professional is doing far more harm to the patient BECAUSE s/he supposedly knows what s/he is doing. (Add to that the systemic pressures that drive clinicians to give their patients short shrift and you'll understand why some would let their licenses lapse and become ordained ministers instead.) I've worked in the mental health system, and I can tell you that it's pretty much FUBAR. So don't kid yourself that, just because somebody has a Ph.D. and a license to practice, their competence or a positive therapeutic outcome for their patients is ensured.
Okay, rant off.
I was also deeply insulted by the following comment, and insulted as well for the diary rescuer and those who commented in response to my diary:
" hopefully, won't get buried"... (0+ / 0-)
...and fortunately it has gone from the front page of DK in a hurry.
IMO as a Rescue piece I have to wonder 'How much was passed under the table ' to situate it on the front page where it was .
I do not favor suppression of information and if this had been just another Left Hand Column piece with an agenda, I as a Veteran who gets medical care via the VA, would have read it and concluded it to be just another business sell job.
Again, IMO this is merely another Shark Cartlege cancer cure hoodwink or more currently the Acai Berry business sales scheme.
When a product is offered as a help for medical or emotional relief of symptoms for every thing from
"lack of Male Enhancement" ( read,can't get it up) thru female breast enlargement...Best U Be Very Wary.
Fortunately, if you just go thru the freebie stuff that Mr. Craig has on line,and spend none of your hard earned money, then I suspect No Harm Done, other than some non productive time spent particularly if you BELIEVE that you achieve some benefit.
I suppose that I am writing this because I am surprised at the supportive comments above. I would expect better from Kossacks but I see that even DK takes all kinds.
by dollparty on Tue Nov 18, 2008 at 04:33:08 PM EST
My reply, and I only regret not thanking dollparty for his/her service:
You sound like me... (0+ / 0-)
I used to vehemently spout off against EMDR and dismiss everyone who used it as harmless but money-grubbing kooks. Until the one session of it that completely alleviated, forever and ever and ever, some symptoms I had suffered with for thirty years. It wasn't a question of belief--which works both ways, by the way--because I refused to believe it would work...until it did.
Have you, dollparty, actually tried EFT and given it a chance? If not, then how about ceasing and desisting with the insulting "takes all kinds" remarks.
by dkistner on Fri Nov 21, 2008 at 10:18:00 AM EST
[Rant-Off]
I will say it again: I grieve for our veterans and their families. Those who have found the help they need, I'm so relieved for you and wish you and those you love the very best. But many have not and will not get this help. Many will not even go to a Vet Center, and those who do (if my experience and that of other trauma therapists I've spoken with is any indication) are more likely to find themselves being misdiagnosed, preached to, or treated punitively and their disability low-balled or outright denied as they are to receive that precious scientifically validated help the EFT detractors are touting.
I wish my father, a lifer and WWII/Korean War vet with raging, undiagnosed, untreated/self-medicated PTSD, had had access to EFT. Not only would it likely have helped him, it might have prevented a hell of a lot of trauma from being inflicted on his wife and four children, who then might have had a prayer of living up to their full potential. And maybe he would not have killed himself in May of 1968 at age 46. (I loved my father so much, and his death made the King and Kennedy assassinations shortly thereafter all the more traumatic.) May his soul rest in Arlington. And while I'm not the praying kind--I'm pretty much anti-religion but pro-spiritual--I pray that our suffering military families can be helped out of hell. I don't give a flying f#&* how it's done, just so they are saved.