EFT therapy and Borderline

Has anyone else ever tried EFT therapy? @ 15 yrs ago years I participated in a study regarding EFT. I was around 20 and had not yet been diagnosed with BPD. That came about a yr later. Anyway, I was really struggling with childhood issues and my therapist asked if I'd be interested in giving it a chance. If I remember correctly the idea is to cause your left brain to become activated while you're right brain is reliving the bad memories. She described it as a way of transferring things across to the other side so that another part of your brain could use it's skills to process the info.

Well, I had good and bad that happened. First, I found that the tapping greatly enhanced whatever memory I was having. It was so extreme that I almost was screaming at her in a rage. She had to switch from tapping my knees with her fingers to tapping with a ruler.

Secondly, I literally felt like I went crazy for a couple of months. Seriously, take every emotion and multiply it. She would have called it off right away, but we both started to notice the positive effects as well. Every week I was feeling a little better about my past. I think I did this type of therapy for @ 8 - 12 wks. We stopped once I started hearing little girl voices. Something that has NEVER happened to me before or since. NEVER!

Again, at this point, I had not been diagnosed with BPD. The weird thing is that I was helped tremendously in regard to the childhood nonsense. The difference with EFT is that you don't even have to talk about those memories, just focus and remember them while the therapist is tapping. I just want to reiterate that it was very successful. We only used it for the one topic, but I can't help but wonder if there might be a way to use it for other BPD issues.

Has anyone else tried it like that? Any experiences that you can share?? Does anyone know if it has ever intentionally been used with borderlines?

My college offers a mental health and wellness program and EFT is the main thing they do. I started it about four months ago to deal with memories, which it definitely helped with. I did have a really bad reaction at first like you did, though it went away after a couple of days. I was diagnosed in the middle of it but she didn't change much, she just worked on the symptoms/feelings that were causing the most current distress or putting me in danger, rather than just the memories. It's definitely worked a bit because some of the urges I was getting aren't as strong, but on the other hand there's a couple of things she worked on that it doesn't seem to have touched at all. I do think it's perhaps more effective on memories and trauma than it is on BPD symptoms, but it's been reasonably helpful.

I think the person I'm seeing works a bit differently to what you described, though. She writes down how I'm feeling, why I think it is, some memories related to it and how strong it is on a scale of 1-10. Then she tells me to repeat after her while I tap, and when it's done she checks if the scale has gone down. If it's zero then she moves on to something else. It can be triggering thinking about all that stuff but I find that I sort of go into a trance while I'm tapping.

The main problem I see with it is that even if it would work - because it might over time - there's so many things that need dealing with, it'd just get so expensive and take so long to deal with all of it. It's free at college but I'll be leaving in a couple of months and it's just so expensive otherwise (£150 a session!) so I won't be able to access it anymore.

Hope that helps a bit!

Thank you so much for sharing your experience. I hope a few more people will do the same and chime so that we can see what the average is.

I think you're right about it being more for memories. Maybe it could be helpful with PTSD or forgiveness issues though? Personally, I didn't see a real difference the day of treatment. I just felt that I changed/improved every week... Kind of a week or two delayed after treatment.

I think what you said makes a lot of sense though.

No problem.

Yeah, I think it's good for forgiveness issues. I did work on some of those with it and it was probably one of the most effective sessions. I actually felt great afterwards! It's also apparently good for phobias too.

I wonder if there were any (hypothetical) memories/past bad experiences that might have contributed to having BPD, it might be effective if those were worked on? I'm going for another session tomorrow and I'm going to ask her if we can work more on the memory/childhood stuff than the current things. I'll let you know what happens and if it makes any difference to my symptoms.

Thanks for sharing this. I havent' heard of this type of therapy so I will look into it more.

thanks for sharing. this is something I've heard about and tried a bit via youtube videos before but never knew if there was really any substance to it or if it was just (forgive me) quackery...hearing that some people have had such significant benefits from it makes me want to look into it more. it does suck that some of these therapies are so expensive...like I said, there are always youtube videos you can use, although it may not be as effective as a one-on-one therapy session.

Just be cautious. I think non BPD people feel some kind of relief immediately after a session, but for me that "relief" took a few days. In the interim I felt crazier than I ever have before or since. Maybe that's b/c people with borderline experience emotions longer?

Even with all of the negatives I experienced, I still stand by the fact that it works for abuse issues and fairly quickly, just a few months, whereas I feel like I haven't gotten anywhere in years on other issues with other therapists. I'd be interested in trying it out again for other BPD things, but only in a more controlled atmosphere (ie: hospital or more intensive outpatient).

We are scheduled to start DBT therapy in a month, so I'm trying to stay positive about that!

-- Thu May 01, 2014 3:51 pm --

Bateman, are you saying that it can be done by yourself?

FluffySocks wrote:Bateman, are you saying that it can be done by yourself?

I have done it myself a few times using youtube videos where you tap on different parts of your body while thinking/repeating certain things, but I'm not sure how effective it is compared to a structured therapy session with it. I didn't stick with it long enough to really tell...

You can do it yourself, but it's best to at least talk to a professional about it first so you can get an idea of what you're doing. You should never try to tackle trauma or other bigger issues by yourself though, even if you're sure you know what you're doing. It can be really dangerous because the treatment alters your subconscious.

My therapist said the Youtube videos are a waste of time really, since it needs to be specific to the patient.