What is Thought Field Therapy?
Are you needing to get rid of troubling habits, ways of thinking, and thoughts which seem stuck in your body? If you answered yes, then learning what is thought field therapy could be very important to you.
Thought Field Therapy, also known as TFT, was developed by Roger Callahan, an American Psychologist. Callahan came to the conclusion our troubling thoughts and methods of thinking were actually stuck in us. The thoughts are trapped in our life energy or life force. These emotional or thought imprints have managed to leave their marks in our psyche, and now we are unable to get rid of them.
TFT combines Callahan’s knowledge from psychology and ancient Eastern methods of healing which work with energy meridians of the body. These Eastern methods include acupuncture, accupressure, Shiatsu massage, and many other forms.
A session in Thought Field Therapy is going to work on identifying your troubling thoughts, patterns, or emotions, and then working on releasing and changing the imprints or habits by using a combination of tapping on the proper energy meridians of the body, while working to change your thought patterns to ones which support your efforts and goals.
Your next question is probably what is thought field therapy’s acceptance within the general psychology community. Most of the community considers the process as untested, and not verifiable. They point to the fact the studies done by Callahan which have been presented only show the successes, not the failures. Callahan’s own studies did not include random samples of people, but only selected patients. One of the most criticized components of TFT is the claim it can cause major changes in only one session.
Is thought field therapy effective? As you are probably wondering from the previous paragraph is there really any basis for trying this form of treatment? Callahan and many of his followers continue to have patients reporting great levels of success after following their treatments. This comes back to the idea of you get what you expect. If you go into a TFT treatment with the expectation it is going to work, and you allow your thoughts to be guided to new places, while being reinforced with the tapping on the energy meridians, it can make major changes. If you go into any form of treatment filled with doubt and skepticism, you are going to leave looking to discover traces of your old behavior, which of course just reinforces the old behavior, building it back just as strongly as before.
Most of the psychology community will recommend you stay away from finding out exactly what is thought field therapy, but you must choose for yourself. Is it worth investing in a single 15 to 30 minute session to seek major life changes, or do you prefer to continue going to session after session with a traditional therapist? Just because you try TFT does not mean you can never return to a normal therapist, it just gives you a new option for more rapid change.
I would like to correct the notion that with Thought Field Therapy, “you get what you expect.” While it is true that one must be willing to follow the procedure, one may still maintain a highly skeptical view and not believe any change will occur, and the treatment will still work a majority of the time. As a therapist, I was quite skeptical of TFT but I did want to rid myself of a fear I had developed of yellow traffic lights. This fear was causing me to brake prematurely which made me vulnerable to the repeat of an accident I had been in. Well, it took five minutes of treatment and I then drove into heavy Seattle traffic. My fear had disappeared and, I might add after 9 years, is still gone. Since then, I have used TFT on myself and with my clients with wonderful results. All of the treatments do not work all of the time for every individual. That would be too good to be true. Also, I do not depend on TFT all of the time. Rather, I use a number of different therapies in conjunction with TFT. Some talk therapy is often needed to discover a “root cause” of a problem but then TFT can help eliminate the problem itself. The latest controlled study of TFT can be found in the Journal of International Emergency Mental Health.
Herb Ayers, MA LMHC TFT Dx