COMPLETENESS OF TREATMENT WITH TFT

Caroline E. Sakai, PhD, TFTdx, VT
Clinical Psychologist
Private Practice

The frequent rapidity of response to treatment of trauma and phobia in Callahan Techniques Thought Field Therapy often brings sighs of relief, cheers of liberated joy, or tears of release. The question raised by clients, practitioners, and skeptics of “how long will it last?” is a constructive one.

My clinical experience over the nine years I have been using TFT is that completeness of treatment with TFT can make a difference in how long it holds with treatment of trauma and phobia. Individualized energy sensitivities have their retriggering effects on addiction, anxiety, depression, fatigue, irritability, insomnia, etc. and at times with trauma and phobia as well. However, this retriggering with trauma and phobia appears in my experience to be reduced with more comprehensive and complete treatment of the trauma or phobia. As Roger Callahan so often states, we want to get to the root causes to eliminate the symptoms from their source of origin.

With treatment of traumas, a screen for dissociative disorders such as the DES and DIS (Dissociative Experiences Scale, Bernstein & Putnam, 1986; Dissociative Interview Schedule, Ross, 1989) is helpful. It is a self-administered test which only takes about 10- 15 minutes to do and score. With high scores (or too low scores with clients with histories of early severe traumas) in the dissociative disorders range, it would then be prudent to take longer in the preparation phase. This would include having the client master TFT self-treatments for stress, anger, rage and fear. Also included would be whatever else would be anticipated to be needed coping skills when the client worksthrough the traumas that have been so horrifying that the client’s protective survival mechanisms invoked the dissociative defense. (For those for whom treatment of dissociative disorders is outside their scope of practice, referrals would be made to the appropriate clinician. For those within scope of practice but without experience, either appropriate supervision would be obtained or referral made.)

The complete TFT treatment for trauma would be essentially following up with what else comes up for the client after successfully processing through the targeted trauma. Targeting any residual body sensations often brings up further information to process through, more perturbations. This would be continued until no more perturbations can be found, and client now thinks about the trauma or phobia with clearly changed perspectives, affect, thoughts, intensity, vividness, body sensations, perceptions in all sensory modalities, etc. Using the Peak Performance protocol to enhance and improve confidence in coping effectively in dealing with the problem is an important component that parallels the future template. The usual instructions for the client to call if there are any recurrence of symptoms would also be in effect, as well as follow-up session(s) to work on residuals or other material that emerges subsequently in awake or dream states.