Chapter 3

If you enter the name of almost any psychological or psychiatric problem you can think of into the search engine of the EFT website (www.emofree.com), you are likely to find that someone has worked with it using energy methods and has reported some success. This does not mean that a few thumps on a set of acupuncture points is going to cure schizophrenia,¹  but it does mean that people have found ways to use energy methods to provide some genuine assistance to individuals with psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia, along with an enormous range of other conditions.

In many cases, this immediately resolves the problem for which the person is seeking help. In other cases, a web of interrelated triggers must be identified and neutralized one by one. That is the detective work we will introduce in this chapter.

The Problems that Respond the Most Quickly

In addition, given the complexities of human emotional life, psychological problems do not necessarily break down into a clearly identifiable stimulus-and-response pattern. Careful observation that helps you identify where to focus your attention is often required. Is the progress being blocked by hidden aspects or psychological reversals? Is special understanding required for working with a particular type of problem, such as depression or an addiction? Addressing such questions is the topic of this chapter. It teaches by example, describing how energy psychology has been successfully used with a range of individuals and conditions. It also gives you some insight into the dynamics of each condition. Even if you do not suffer with a specific problem discussed below, some of the principles for overcoming that problem may apply to situations you do encounter, so we encourage you to read each section. The descriptions are written to teach basic strategies and highlight possibilities as much as to address the particular problem.

Fears and Phobias

Fear of Public Speaking

Sue had a speech impediment that resulted in an intense fear of public speaking. She attended a workshop presented by Gary and his associate Adrienne Fowlie. During the lunch break, Sue asked them for help with her fear. She showed them a scar on her neck where an operation for throat cancer had been performed. As a result of the operation, she could not speak normally and it was difficult to understand her. Not surprisingly, she was not fond of public speaking. In fact, she was terrified of it, with a range of the physiological symptoms of phobia, from a racing heart to feelings of nausea. To make matters worse, she was a sergeant in the Army and frequently had to "public speak" in front of her troops.

About 10% of the population suffers from one or more phobias. Phobias cause untold misery and often severely limit the lives of those who have them. There are hundreds of possible phobias, but the Basic Recipe can be effective regardless of what triggers the irrational fear. Because it involves the same neurological process, you use the same strategy whatever the trigger. Among the most common triggers are fears of:

People are often amazed by how quickly a lifelong phobia may vanish. This, of course, does not cause them to step into harm’s way. The process doesn't make them stupid. They don't suddenly jump off tall buildings or kiss grizzly bears. Normal caution and concern are not erased by rebalancing the meridian energies in order to neutralize a phobic response. However, people who have eliminated a phobia using energy techniques tend to have less fear in the situation about which they were originally phobic than other people. Almost everyone, for example, has some fear response to heights. Ask 100 people to look down from the top of a tall building, though they are in total safety, and many of them will feel at least a bit queasy, a physiological component of the fear response. By contrast, those who have completely eliminated a height phobia using the tapping sequence don't even feel queasy. The wiring has been changed. They are left only with a healthy caution.

Multiple Phobias

Sometimes a person suffers with several phobias. The guideline is to treat them one at a time. For example, make sure your snake phobia is totally cleared before you address your claustrophobia. Then make sure your claustrophobia has been completely neutralized before you address your driving phobia. In addition, some phobias, called "complex phobias," are actually several phobias wrapped into one. The fear of flying can be like that. It might involve 1) the fear of being enclosed in a relatively small area, 2) the fear of falling, 3) the fear of turbulence, 4) the fear of taking off, 5) the fear of landing, 6) and the fear of being shut in with people. If you have a complex phobia, treat each component you are able to identify as if it were a separate problem. This may require a number of rounds, but persistent use of the Basic Recipe can permanently neutralize even a complex phobia within a relatively short period of time.

Traumatic Memories and Other Difficult Life-Shaping Events

Peeling Away the Layers of Sexual Abuse

The above case is presented because it is so straightforward that it is easy to follow what occurred. One traumatic incident. One aspect. Instant results. The path is not always so direct. Rachel told her therapist³ that she had worked through her childhood sexual abuse history in therapy, but she still felt that fears and other emotions got in the way of her intimate relationships. Rachel said she "keeps people at bay" and "loses her center" when she gets involved, and she explained that this was why her relationships have always "backfired."

The therapist did not automatically accept her assurance that she had "worked through her childhood sexual abuse" in her previous therapy. Energy therapists quickly learn that when a client who has been in conventional treatment makes a statement like that, it doesn’t necessarily mean the emotions have been resolved. The issue may still cause a reaction in the brain that triggers a dysfunctional emotional response. It is not that they are lying. "Working through it" often means they have talked about it repeatedly in therapeutic sessions to gain insight and understanding and to hopefully to feel better about it. They may have learned to cope with or repress the emotional response, or to change the subject when the topic comes up. But ask them a pointed question that gets to the heart of the matter and you will often get cringing, tears, physical upsets, and other symptoms of a still unresolved issue. Taking a clue from Rachel’s continuing difficulty with intimacy, the therapist made a first guess that the emotional aftermath of her sexual abuse had not been adequately resolved.

She asked Rachel how she felt talking about her relationships, and Rachel described a physical reaction. "My stomach feels gurgly and gassy. It’s holding onto something, not letting go. Something is not being processed the way it should be." The therapist soon had her tapping, using a Setup Affirmation that began, "Although there's something I can't digest and process . . ." Rachel’s stomach calmed with the tapping, and the therapist next asked, "If your digestive system could say what it is that it can't digest and process, what would that be?" The answer Rachel offered was, "Too much excitement. I just can't process it. I get overwhelmed." Rachel then tapped on "Although I get overwhelmed . . ." This led to an insight. "Yes, part of me hates that feeling . . . but another part of me craves it. It's like teen energy. I love the excitement."

The therapist asked her to tune into what it is like to have these two opposing parts, asking if it set her up for tension or anxiety. Rachel responded that she wanted to learn to contain it all, to enjoy the excitement without being over-stimulated. She next tapped for "Although I tend to get over-stimulated . . ." This was followed by Rachel getting images of herself as a child. She became aware that as a child, if she felt good about anything, she couldn't contain it. She had to "go out and burn it off." This had been true in adulthood too. Feeling good made her "want to go out and party."

The therapist asked her to again close her eyes, think about feeling good, and notice her response. Did it give her a calm feeling? Did it give her anxiety? It was as if a light went on in Rachel’s head. She realized that this was the core of her inability to have successful relationships. Whenever she would get close to someone and begin to enjoy the pleasure, the anxiety would be so strong that she would sabotage the relationship.

So Rachel tapped for "Although feeling good makes me anxious..." Tears welled up. She realized that, as a child, at times "the sexual abuse felt good but it was bad." She was still carrying that strong inner message that it wasn't okay to feel good. She tapped for "Although I learned that feeling good was bad . . ." and "Although my child believed that feeling good was bad, I deeply & completely love and accept my child and I know she was a good girl and it wasn't her fault." This was all very moving, the first time she had truly felt compassion for how confused that part of her had been. She next tapped on "releasing this belief that feeling good is bad."

The 90-minute session did not end there. Rachel next tapped on the pain of how there was no one to tell (about the abuse) and no one to help her. She also worked with her grief for all she had lost by not being able to bond in relationship with others during adulthood. Then, at a certain point, she got in touch with some very positive childhood memories. She remembered that she excelled at a certain sport and she felt great about her body when she was really in the flow, "feeling good and calm at the same time." Her therapist showed her how to reinforce the feeling of being fully alive yet not over-stimulated by "rubbing in the positive," using the chest sore spots while recalling this memory and stating "Just calm and in the flow."

At their next meeting, Rachel reported: "Connections with people feel different. I feel an easiness being with people. I just feel closer. It's like the anxiety all went away. There's a part of me that feels really peaceful now. And I've been really energetic!"

While it is beyond the scope of any book to suggest that you overcome a history of sexual abuse without outside help, this case is instructive in several ways. For one thing, it illustrates how guilt is often a component of unresolved abuse. People tend to focus on their anger and victimization, but Rachel’s dilemma that "feeling good is bad" is not uncommon. Sexual abuse involves our pleasure zones. In some cases, it felt good as well as horrible or confusing. This is not a popular notion. Social pressure actually causes people who were abused to focus on their anger and victimization rather than guilt. Anger and other feelings about having been victimized can be directed outwardly, toward the abuser, and that is certainly appropriate. But if guilt is there, it must also be confronted.. Guilt is an "inside job." It requires taking personal responsibility for an ongoing problem. For this reason, people often resist working on their own guilt. Those who were abused, however, sometimes need to develop internal permission to recognize that feelings of guilt are involved if they are to fully resolve the ongoing emotional problems caused by the abuse.

Applying the Basic Recipe to a Difficult Memory

Additional principles illustrated by Rachel’s case include:

1. How many aspects may be involved in a complex issue such as relationship difficulties,

2. How resolving one aspect can point to the next one if you simply notice your internal responses,

3. How current issues often lead you to earlier memories, and

4. How rapidly each aspect may be resolved by using the Basic Recipe. Again, each round requires only about a minute.

Rachel’s case notwithstanding, many traumatic memories can be resolved without treating any aspects beyond the main memory. A few trips through the Basic Recipe and the energy disturbance and subsequent emotion no longer occur. The memory will lose its emotional charge, and in many cases the change is permanent.

Other traumatic memories, however, have several aspects. They require more time because you need to identify the aspects and then work with each one. But even if extra rounds of the Basic Recipe are needed, the time required to defuse a traumatic memory can still be relatively brief. The most challenging task is identifying the relevant aspects of the memory.

A technique that can support you in identifying the relevant aspects of a memory or a problem is to make a mental movie of the memory or the situation on which you are focusing. This helps the relevant issues become more clear. A traumatic memory is actually already like a short movie that runs in the theater of your mind. There is a beginning. There are main characters and events. And there is an end. Usually such "movies" play in a flash and finish with a familiar unwanted emotion. Because the movie plays so fast, we are often unaware that it may have different aspects which each contribute to the negative emotion. The emotional reaction seems to come from the movie as a whole.

If you run the movie in slow motion, however, the different aspects can be located and then addressed. And that is exactly the technique we are suggesting. Run the movie in slow motion, examining it scene by scene. If you are concerned that it might be traumatic to re-imagine the movie, there is an important in-between step. Begin with the "tearless trauma technique," where you guess what it would be like to think about the issue, and use the Basic Recipe to remove some of the charge from the memory until you can psychologically enter the scene without too much discomfort.

Then, run the memory as a short mental movie (perhaps one to three minutes). At the same time, narrate the movie. Describe it out loud. Tell it to a friend or a mirror or a tape recorder or simply the space in front of you. And, most important, tell it in detail. This automatically slows the movie because words are much slower than thoughts.

As you tell it in detail, each aspect will make itself known to you. Stop as soon as you feel any   intensity (remember, this approach is designed to be adapted in ways that minimize pain) and perform the Basic Recipe on that part of the story as though it were a separate traumatic memory. Actually, it is a separate traumatic memory. It just got lost within the larger movie. Continue through the movie, stopping at each aspect. Bring each to zero, until you can tell the whole story with no negative emotional impact whatsoever.

Again, many traumatic memories have only one aspect. Others have two or three. More than three are relatively rare. Whatever the number, be persistent. If you have several traumatic memories, use the same strategy you would use for several fears or phobias: treat them one at a time. Take the most intense memory first and bring it to zero before going on to the next one. Then the next, until each has been neutralized. In the process, you will likely feel a sense of freedom and it may actually border on euphoria. It is a tremendous relief to unload useless baggage. Some people, such as war veterans or victims of ritual abuse may have hundreds of traumatic memories. As they begin to neutralize some of the memories working with an energy-oriented practitioner, the generalization effect eventually comes into play. After they have completely cleared between five and twenty of them, they are likely to notice that after a point they have little emotional intensity about the remaining ones. The generalization effect will have neutralized them. So even if your troubling memories run in the dozens or more, relief need not be far away.

ANXIETY

A Toddler’s Temper Tantrums

Blair,⁴ while not a professional therapist, had some training in EFT. He asked Gina’s permission to "try something," and Gina had no objection. He walked over to the still screaming child and said, "It's okay. I know it's hard for you right now." He reached down, took Evan’s little hand, and started tapping on his karate chop point as he said, "Even though you're really upset right now, we all love you." He tapped around Evan’s eyes. "Even though you're really upset right now, you're okay just the way you are." He tapped on the boy’s face, then his chest, and the crying stopped. Evan began smiling, and wiped his tears away. Blair finished the round, tapping the back of Evan’s hand, held it for a moment, then let go. Evan sat quietly. Gina was dumbstruck. "What did you do? He can't listen to anything when he gets like that, and touching him makes him really mad! What did you do?"

I considered her request a tall order because of the severity of the condition, my limited success using EFT with severe OCD, and the potential complications for her. Nevertheless I thought that using and teaching her to use meridian stimulation would be worthwhile. I did not know whether Diane would be able to cease medication at all—and I told her this. I notified her psychiatrist that I was teaching her a relaxation and stress-management technique that could in some cases have additional benefits as well.

Her symptoms included severe compulsive "checking" of details about the house when going out, and re-checking in most instances as she "forgot" whether she had really been certain of a detail. The process might take an hour. She also suffered panic attacks and generalized anxiety. She had recently developed a fear of flying and was due to fly shortly. I told her that we would make an experiment using EFT and see how much benefit it returned to her.

Initially I taught her the variation of meridian stimulation I call "continual tapping" (see www.eftdownunder.com/articles_EFT.html#Continual) with good results. She noticed a great lessening of the compulsive urge and was particularly pleased to know a self-help technique. After a week, we began to explore her limiting beliefs about her OCD using formal EFT and also using the provocative style that Steve Wells and I have found brings great focus and leverage to a problem. Some of her greatest fears were that she would never get over this and that she would have it forever, that there was nothing she could do about it, and that it could get worse. Sometimes the fear during an anxiety attack was "paralyzing" and "terrifying"; her ultimate fear was that "I can't be reassured". There were several such intense panic incidents that needed a lot of work to desensitize with tapping, using Gary's excellent "Tell the Story" technique.⁵

Diane continued her practice at home mainly using continual tapping for convenience. She used the tapping I taught her more often and more effectively than anyone I can remember.

At the end of the third session she told me that she had ceased her medication since she felt so well using EFT. I was alarmed, since these medications should be ceased gradually, but because she seemed well we pressed on. She told me that her fear had once returned but it was manageable and subsided with the tapping after half an hour. Her fear of flying was also "95% gone" when she next flew in a plane.

On another occasion about six weeks into our treatment, she had a panic and anxiety attack lasting many hours, which did not respond so well to EFT. This was a setback to her; nevertheless we continued the experiment. There was another episode like this a few weeks later.

Diane remained in control of her symptoms thereafter, using EFT. Her confidence increased and she functioned with a better balance, more accepting and less self-critical. Her old checking habits and anxieties were still there in a minor way, but did not interfere with her life. We had some six EFT sessions over three months, and she became pregnant about six months later. She did have what I would call ordinary anxieties about becoming pregnant and being a good mother. During the later stage of her pregnancy, she did come to see me about an anxiety she "couldn't shake," related to whether her worrying would harm the baby, and if the baby was in fact alright. We dealt with the new fears in the same way as all her original fears and presenting worries—a lot of continual tapping and traditional EFT on every specific aspect we could think of. There was also the fear of the "unknown," of looking after a dependent baby, and whether she would cope with the responsibilities.

Considering how universal these fears are in mothers-to-be, I was struck by how "normal" their degree was for Diane. She did not lose control and she did face up to the reality very well, learning more coping skills and just understanding how other people cope too.

Her progress from the beginning was surprising to me. I have not had this kind of rapid success before in such a severe case of OCD, and with relatively few sessions.

This is a clinical example, and it is appropriate that a therapist be involved with any case of severe anxiety. By seeing how a more extreme situation was handled in a clinical setting, however, you gain deeper instruction in how to apply the methods to everyday anxieties.

Treating Disabling Anxiety

Rikki, a 25-year-old woman with a five-year history of agoraphobia (a fear of being in open areas or public places) with severe panic symptoms, was referred for psychotherapy⁶  by a health care professional who had been attempting to treat the anxiety using homeopathic remedies. Rikki refused to see a psychiatrist because she was unwilling to consider taking traditional anti-anxiety medications. Despite having a 22-month-old daughter, she had rarely left her house in the 15 months prior to entering therapy. She was overwhelmed with disabling anxiety and fears of just about everything. She had not driven a car or left her block in all that time. She had food and other supplies delivered.

Given these circumstances, the therapist made home visits and supplemented them with phone sessions. After Rikki learned the tapping procedure, the phone became a viable alternative, where the therapist could coach her in applying the method as new situations emerged. Rikki's anxiety about "unsafety in the world" was triggered and fueled by a multitude of negative thoughts and belief systems that all started with "What if . . ." followed by a "then . . ." statement that included a worst case scenario. For example, "What if I start to drive to my grandmother's house and then I get stuck in traffic at the corner of Main Street and Elm, and I have to go to the bathroom, and I get nervous, and I'm stuck there, and then I can't get back home again." Rikki was conscious and aware that her thoughts fueled her panic, but she had no way to stop them.

The therapy began by tracking Rikki’s thoughts and her complex system of negative beliefs. With each discovery of a new "nagging" thought, the Basic Recipe was used to eradicate it. While she responded well, she would also frequently mention another fear: that simply acknowledging her worries would escalate her anxiety. At these times, the therapist would have her stop and tap on, "Even though continuing makes me feel a little nervous . . ." Then she could continue. Rikki began to feel empowered by the process of uncovering her negative thought patterns and having a way to disengage them.

After the initial session, Rikki was able to walk out of her house without feeling anxious. After the second session, she drove the three blocks into town, took her daughter to the library, and began daily excursions. Her life was beginning to normalize. Even after she uncovered a core issue and the anxiety returned, she was still able to go out into the town.

The core issue had to do with an LSD trip she had when she was 16 years old. She had been traumatized by the "stuckness" of not being able to stop the hallucinations and distortions she experienced for 12 interminable hours. She described her shame and guilt about having taken the drug, as well as the traumatization. The work on this incident required two sessions. The Basic Recipe was first used on her shame and guilt. Then on the fact that she was allowing herself the memories and verbalizing them, since she believed that talking or reliving the emotional experience would trigger an acid flashback. Next was the feeling that it was unsafe to do this work and the fear that she would uncover something that would propel her into even greater pain. She and her therapist became partners in the process of uncovering and addressing her fears about doing energy work on relieving the trauma of the acid trip itself, and then on her complex system of negative beliefs. It was a profound experience for this young woman to free herself of her agoraphobia and panic attacks by making peace with her "nagging anxiety thoughts and all those what-ifs."

Applying the Basic Recipe to Anxiety

Again, the point here is not to encourage you to treat yourself for a serious psychiatric condition without the help of a qualified professional. Rather, by showing you how a severe case of anxiety was successfully treated using the Basic Recipe, you will have a stronger basis for applying the essential principles to help yourself with the normal anxieties of everyday life.

And most of us face anxiety-provoking circumstances every day. Turn on the news. Think on your worries about your children, your health, your retirement. It is not necessary that we enumerate; you know them all too well. But it is also not necessary, or useful, to dwell on what can go wrong. Hanging out in anxiety and pessimism does not keep bad things from happening or make you any more effective if they do. Keeping anxiety at bay is an important skill in these troubling times. In fact, activating your optimism, rather than causing you to be off-guard and vulnerable to more bad things, has the effect of making you more resilient and effective in managing life’s challenges.⁷ Energy methods can help you to turn off unnecessary anxiety and to transform negative, pessimistic thinking—as you will see in the following chapter—toward an outlook that highlights and promotes possibilities that are desirable and realistic.

Notice that with Rikki, a traumatic memory was one of the core aspects of her anxiety, but equally harmful were her intruding "what-if" thoughts and negative beliefs. Remember how even as the energy methods were working, fears would emerge about the process itself. She worried that "Simply acknowledging my worries will escalate my anxiety" or "Just thinking about my LSD experience will cause a flashback." As these negative thoughts would intrude, circling back on the treatment itself, the therapist would patiently have them become the focus of the tapping treatments. You can do that for yourself as well. As you focus on your anxiety, the aspects most likely to emerge are memories from the past that contributed to current feelings of anxiety and negative thoughts that feed them. Both will be responsive to the Basic Recipe.

Depression

An estimated forty million people in the U.S are clinically depressed, and the numbers are increasing. Depression can cause persistent sadness and lethargy, a sense of personal worthlessness, negative thoughts and perceptions, a loss of interest in normal activities, changes in diet and sleep, and frequent thoughts of death. Although medication treats the symptoms of depression in millions of people, the precise causes and mechanisms of the disorder remain elusive. Patients often must go through a period of trial-and-error before the best drug regimen is identified, and even then the medication may not be as effective as hoped and will often cause mild to severe side effects. 

What is well understood is that if you are depressed, your brain operates differently than it does when you are not depressed. Restoring proper brain function is the goal of all treatments for depression—whether directly, as with medication—or indirectly, as in the development of more life-affirming behaviors, attitudes, and habits of thought. By sending electromagnetic impulses to the brain while focusing on various elements of the depression, energy psychology can sometimes restore normal functioning quite readily.

If a person who is going through a difficult and seemingly endless series of challenges becomes depressed, you can certainly understand it. Periods of depression serve a function. Sometimes called "reactive depression," these episodes force you to slow down, turn inward, and adjust to a loss or difficult circumstance. It is a healthy response that can leave you stronger and more resilient. Or it can become self-perpetuating, trapping you in a cycle of negative-thinking and self-doubt. When this occurs, the Basic Recipe can be applied to the recent experiences that initiated the depression ("Even though I miss Bill terribly . . .") as well as to various other aspects of the depression, such as negative thought patterns ("Even though I keep dwelling on the missed opportunities . . .") or unresolved early experiences ("Even though this reminds me of how devastated I felt when I was eleven and Grandma died. . .").

Major Depression

Applying the Basic Recipe to Depression

The conventional psychotherapy that has been used most successfully in the treatment of depression is Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT). CBT teaches people to interrupt maladaptive thought patterns, such as ruminating on everything that might go wrong or seeing the glass only as half empty or blaming themselves for things over which they have no control. This approach has much in common with energy psychology, where you separate complex reactions into their component thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. But energy psychology adds a means for sending electromagnetic signals that directly shift the neurological sequences involved with maladaptive thoughts and attitudes, often deactivating them with surprising speed and precision. The successful treatment of depression also often includes a number of commonsense lifestyle modifications that can be supported with use of the Basic Recipe, such as increasing rest, decreasing stress, introducing more physical exercise, and developing a better interpersonal support system.

A powerful combination of energy interventions with Cognitive Behavior Therapy has been developed by Hank Krol,¹² a psychotherapist in Pennsylvania. He gives his clients standardized checklists for assessing depression.¹³ They rate themselves on a scale of 1 to 4 for each of 19 symptoms, according to the frequency the symptom is experienced. Among the symptoms on the scale:

• feelings of guilt

• irritable mood

• less interest or pleasure in usual activities

• withdrawing from or avoiding people

• finding it harder than usual to do things

Another checklist helps his patients identify the negative beliefs that accompany their depression, such as

• "I’m no good."

• "I will always fail."

• "Things will never get better."

• "No one can help me."

Identifying these specifics separates the person’s depression into its cognitive, affective, and behavioral aspects. Each can then be targeted with energy interventions, using the Basic Recipe much as you learned it in Chapter 2. Krol will generally select only one aspect for a single session, two at the most. He will verify that it is important to the patient that distress around this particular issue be reduced. If so, he will (unless the person happens to be directly experiencing the issue at the moment) ask the person to recall a recent situation where the symptom was experienced at a high intensity. The patient applies the Basic Recipe, reducing as much as possible the rating on this aspect of the depression during the session. Homework is also assigned to continue the process between meetings.

In the next session, another memory involving the same symptom or negative thought is identified, rated, and treated if necessary. The patient keeps a focus on this same aspect of the depression until it has been brought down to a 0 or near 0 or a different aspect requires attention before it can be reduced further. Once it has been cleared, another aspect is selected and worked with until it has been neutralized. Krol has found this approach to be quite effective with many of his patients, but doing the suggested self-treatments between sessions seems important to its success.

Different types of depression need to be approached differently. Sometimes a depression simply disappears with a few minutes of tapping. This can be very dramatic, but it is not usually the case, particularly with a serious depression. More often, the depression appears to be caused by numerous unresolved emotional issues such as guilt, shame, fear, grief, or anger. These more complex or persistent depressions usually require work with a skilled counselor who is able identify and focus on the core emotional issues. Even more challenging are longstanding depressions where there is reason to suspect a strong biological component. Here, even the best psychotherapy sometimes needs to be supplemented by medication.

Again, for major or ongoing depression, consult a health care professional, perhaps one who will support you in using an energy approach as an adjunct to the therapy. In applying the Basic Recipe to the more usual mood swings all of us must negotiate, the feature to adapt from Krol’s approach is to be specific. If stating the generic problem such as "Even though I have this depression . . ." does not give you distinct and lasting improvement within a few rounds of the Basic Recipe, separate your depressed mood into aspects such as negative thoughts, earlier times you felt depressed or engaged in negative thinking, other instances where you tended to withdraw, et cetera, and treat them one by one. As the core aspects of this depression lose their grip on you, not only will the depression tend to lift, you will be building a resilience that makes you less vulnerable to falling into future depression.

Habits and Addictions

Beyond being able to apply the Basic Recipe to each of the psychological aspects of addiction—such as the cravings, the emotional dependencies, and the personal history that led to the particular object of the addiction—energy therapists are able to shift the dopamine and serotonin imbalances that underlie addiction. The biochemical signature of a person who is predisposed to addiction includes low levels of serotonin (a brain chemical that transmits nerve impulses) combined with a tendency to too readily secrete dopamine (another "neurotransmitter," whose actions are very different from those of serotonin).¹⁴ The correction of this serotonin/dopamime imbalance using energy interventions exemplifies the way that energy psychology can build on scientific understanding of the precise brain mechanisms involved in difficult disorders for formulating effective treatment strategies, and we will discuss in some detail the chemistry of addiction and the application of an energy approach in its treatment.

The Neurochemistry of Addiction. The neurochemistry of addiction has been closely studied and, to a reasonable degree, mapped. While the following is a vast oversimplification, the basic ingredients of addictive behavior are rooted in the same mechanisms nature created to motivate us to do the three essential activities necessary for personal and species survival: eating/drinking, avoiding harm, and reproducing. Our motivation toward these activities is regulated by a small structure in the primitive brain called the "nucleus accumbens" and by a dance within it between two brain chemicals—dopamine and serotonin. Dopamine motivates you to do what is required to obtain food, insure safety, and procreate. Once you are full, safe, or satisfied, serotonin is secreted. Serotonin restrains the action of dopamine, turning off the compelling motivation to address a primal need. According to Ron Ruden, M.D., Ph.D., in The Craving Brain, dopamine sends the message "Gotta have it—go get it" and serotonin sends the mission-accomplished message "Got it."¹⁵

When you are hungry, for instance, the nucleus accumbens is sensitized to anything associated with food or with ways to get food. When it recognizes something that can assuage your hunger, it secretes dopamine to motivate you into action to obtain the food. Meanwhile, if you are really hungry, your brain serotonin levels have become low. When serotonin levels are down, the effects of dopamine are amplified, making its call to action an imperative. You can think of little other than food. Once you have eaten, signals originating in your digestive system increase your serotonin levels, your hunger subsides, and you feel a sense of satiation and contentment.

Because we evolved to be able to keep ourselves fed in as many circumstances as possible, it is more than the mere presence of food that releases the dopamine that causes you to spring into action. Images of food, plans for preparing a meal, thoughts of the family at the dinner table, turning onto the street of a favorite restaurant, or a television advertisement featuring veal parmesan may lead to the same sequence of internal events that the scent of a rabbit initiated in your ancestors, and therein lies the vulnerability to addiction. It is not only the presence of food, danger, or a desirable sexual opportunity that sets the serotonin/dopamine dance into motion. Anything associated with food, danger, or sexual opportunity can, when serotonin levels are low, cause high enough dopamine levels to evoke the same focus and strength of motivation that nature designed for critical survival situations.

Since the mind can associate anything with anything, the possibilities for addiction are endless. All that is necessary is that the triggering substance, situation, or symbol can cause the release of dopamine within the addict’s landscape of low serotonin. While the object of choice will depend on a complex of the addict’s neurochemistry, environment, and history, dopamine levels may be sharply raised simply by thoughts of alcohol, cigarettes, narcotics, cocaine, marijuana, food, or the behavior sequences involved in gambling, sex, work, or shopping, as well as anything that becomes symbolically associated with these substances or behaviors. Any of these may take a leading role in the addictive drama of a person whose brain is predisposed with low serotonin levels and a nucleus accumbens that secretes dopamine too readily.

An addiction—an excessive physical or psychological dependence on a substance or a behavior—is characterized by three successive states: 1) sobriety, 2) relapse, and 3) compulsive, repetitive, coordinated behavior to obtain the substance or carry out the activity that is the object of the addiction. For an addict, serotonin is low during the craving state that precedes relapse, the nucleus accumbens is sensitized to finding the object of the addiction or anything associated with it, high levels of dopamine are secreted, and sobriety has moved into relapse. From there, the individual feels compelled to pursue the addictive substance or behavior.

When the object of the addiction is a behavior, such as gambling, sex, or shopping, the behavior takes on a compulsive quality, performed without a sense of choice, sometimes literally against  one’s own will. An addiction may also be deeply entrenched in a person’s self-concept or even be part of a cultural imperative. If you grew up with the Marlboro Man as an image of masculinity, or if you primarily hang out around people smoke, quitting will be harder than if you idolize the Dali Lama and are trying to break the habit while spending the month at a yoga retreat.

Treating a Food Addiction

Applying the Basic Recipe to Habits and Addictions

The emotional baggage carried with any addiction or difficult habit can be systematically addressed, as you saw with Ann. Early in the treatment, Dr. Look asks her clients to identify the downside of overcoming their addictions. The answers often point to psychological reversals and other emotional aspects of the pattern. For instance, a "downside" Ann identified in relationship to stopping her afternoon food binges was that she would feel dissatisfied and angry all the time and wouldn’t know what to do with those feelings. She also said she feared that she would have to come to terms with all the turmoil in her life, and she acknowledged that the extra weight was being used as protection against years of emotional pain and feelings of rejection and abandonment.

Along with healing the emotional components that underlie an addiction, energy interventions can provide a way of dealing with cravings as they occur in the moment. While we know of no laboratory studies that track this specifically, we suspect that tapping on a specific craving impacts the dopamine/serotonin imbalances discussed earlier. In working with smokers, Look will ask her clients to take out a cigarette, smell it, and rate their current desire, craving, or urge on the 0 to 10 scale. Then the Basic Recipe is used to reduce the craving as it exists right then in the office: "Even though I have this craving to smoke now . . ." She will then ask her clients to identify three or four times of the day they most like to smoke and will apply the Basic Recipe to bring down each of them. If smoking with their morning coffee is one of their favorite times, Look would have them imagine having their morning coffee and giving a rating to how much they want a cigarette. Then the Basic Recipe is applied to each of these situations where the trigger for the addiction is strong, using a Setup such as "Even though I want to smoke when I drink my morning coffee . . . " or "Even though I have this urge to smoke after dinner . . ."

Once bringing down these urges, Look reverses the situation. Clients are asked to imagine themselves having their morning coffee without a cigarette, and they rate the level of anxiety or upset they feel. This can then be treated using the Basic Recipe, but it is a time to stay particularly alert for additional emotions that keep an addiction in place. Once these aspects of the addiction can be identified, they can be treated one by one. Among the feelings that