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Psychology Expert Shares Her Wisdom on EFT Versus Exposure Therapy to Overcome Social Anxiety

SUMMARY

EFT is a hands-down more effective than Exposure Therapy.

I interviewed leading psychologist and EFT Energy Psychology pioneer Dr. Patricia Carrington, PhD. She shares the difference between EFT and Exposure Therapy. And we look at what might be a far more effective approach to overcoming social anxiety than the “face your fears approach”.

Dr. Carrington shares her wisdom and opinions on:

  • What Exposure Therapy is and why it’s less effective than EFT
  • What EFT is and what you can expect when you use it to overcome your social anxiety
  • The success rate you can expect with EFT
  • How you can take EFT to the next level
  • The future growth of EFT that we can expect

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Sebastiaan: Welcome to episode 67 of Social Anxiety Solutions – Your journey to social confidence. My name is Sebastiaan van der Schrier and I’m an ex-social anxiety disorder sufferer and I’m also a social confidence coach specialize in helping people with social anxiety feel calm and at ease in social situations. Now, I’ve personally been able to overcome my social anxiety thanks to energy psychology and the help of some brilliant therapists. And on this podcast show, I interview some of these therapists as well as other experts to explore social anxiety solutions from both Western traditional psychology as well as Eastern energy psychology. And today I’m interviewing dr. Patricia Carrington on the topic of “Exposure therapy versus Energy psychology”.

Here’s a bit about Patricia. Dr. Patricia Carrington PhD is a leading psychologist and one of the pioneers in the field of EFT Energy Psychology. She was formerly on the faculty of Princeton University, worked as a clinical professor at the University of Medicine and Dentistry in New Jersey and has since 1987, that’s about three years after I was born been, she’s been a leader and teacher of EFT tapping. She’s the author of leading book in this field called “Discover the Power of Meridian Tapping: A Revolutionary Method for Stress-Free Living”. And she’s well known in the EFT community for her EFT choices method. So, Pat thank you very much for making it to the show.

Dr. Pat Carrington: Oh, wonderful. I’m excited, I don’t know what the questions are gonna be, but we shall see.

Sebastiaan: Alright. So, I thought maybe to you know, to kick things off to make it clear. You know, in a nutshell what is exposure therapy?

Dr. Pat Carrington: Exposure therapy is simply a name for one of the behavioral therapies. They’re behavioral cognitive, cognitive behavioral therapies. And it isn’t new. It is sometimes presented as new because sometimes exposure therapy is used along with videos that simulate the frightened, the situation the person doesn’t… is afraid of. Like a crowded room or an active, very active interactive party that’s going on or something like that or lots of crowds because exposure therapy when it’s targeting social anxiety is targeting a number of different kinds of fears.

Now, exposure therapy simply consists of exposing the person that’s why they use that word to the feared stimulus. So, they’re afraid of spiders, they expose them not to real life spiders or are not necessarily right away. But they make the people face the feared thing whether it’s spiders flying in an airplane or going to a social occasion of a certain type or maybe not even a certain type maybe just to any that’s above a certain level of people whether it’s a lot of people that they fear or certain types of people or all kinds of encounters outside the house. And it can be combined very much. This is social anxiety. It can be combined with agoraphobia which is a fear of leaving your own safe world wherever your safe place is identified as your home or what your wherever and your parents’ home.

So, in a nutshell and exposure therapy involves exposing the person to the fears you face your fear, you face your fear undaunted. But unfortunately for a great many people they’ve tried to do that. That’s the old fashioned. It really is an extremely old-fashioned therapy because as you see there are many, many parents and many teachers and many other people of influence in a child’s life who will tell them all just go and get it over with and you know just face it. You’ll feel better when you get there. Well, you might feel worse when you got there. And that is what was finally discovered when social anxiety became a diagnostic entity of its own.

So, in a nutshell exposure therapy might involve either taking the people. I remember one psychiatrist I knew in New Jersey who was prominent and worked in an important private mental hospital in New Jersey. He is to be assigned to take the patients to in a bus to the door afraid of water to the ocean. They’d ride them to the ocean and make them literally walk into the water as far as they could. They didn’t push them so that they would run into a panic. They didn’t push them into water that was over their head or into big waves that would be threatening but they kept them near them and they made them go further and further as they were able to.

Now, I’ll tell you a little bit more about what happened when they did that in person, but I want to go back to my point which is exposure therapy also involves imagination. You can ask the person just to imagine going to the near big body of water if they were afraid of water or you can expose them directly to a videotape. And the videotape can be more or less elaborate. It could have pictures of you know, you when you look at visually the place you’re going to be afraid to be or the thing you’re going to be afraid to. To picture it in such a way that it seems quite real. And if it has certain sounds, they today they’re getting very realistic because they have the technology to do it. And then that’s where the name exposure therapy really came in and they tried to make it look, well, I don’t know whether they consciously set out to do this, but the result was they seem to be trying to make it very legitimate be and legitimately new because they were using new technology to bring it to the people and then they didn’t make them go to the real place. They didn’t make them go on a flight to handle flight anxiety, they would make it simulated flight.

Well, it’s a lot cheaper to do that. It’s a lot faster, it’s a lot more practical and it is easier for people. I mean it’s easier to know that you’re in a laboratory if you can remember because you get very involved with it with the pictures and the depiction and sometimes you feel vibration and this deceit. They have all kinds of ways, tactile and auditory and visual to bring it to you. So, that made it look like a new therapy.

Well, it was really just an added aspect of an old thing that’s been used a lot as I say by parents, teachers and so they… Oh, face your fear. Go ahead, face it. You’ll get, you’ll find it it’s nothing. Look at the monster in the face. That kind of thing.

Sebastiaan: Right. Because it’s so riddled in society, right? Patricia had the whole idea of face your fears. You know, Nike like “Just do it” and all these really old-school quotes that you see on the web. Like you know, the only way to face your fear, to overcome your fears is to go through it. And you know, the death affair is certain once you face it and bla-bla-bla. All these all these motivational quotes because it’s such an old-style approach to dealing with the fears that we have.

Dr. Pat Carrington: It’s completely old style and it is completely untrue when they say when just go right there and face it and you might overcome it. Sometimes you do if it’s on the margin and you’re sort of overcoming it anyway. Going there may push you to some behavior or some reaction that allows you to feel more comfortable. But well, most of the time it may make you worse because it only reinforces the fact that these things are terrifying, and you want to get out on them. It could, it could drive you into a panic attack and I’ve known this to happen. Not with me, my patients because I don’t use that strategy. But well, for those who did have to have that strategy. It can be intensifying. Okay?

Sebastiaan: And for people that don’t know yet in a nutshell what is EFT or energy psychology?

Dr. Pat Carrington: Well, they’re not synonymous. So, I’m not going to talk about energy psychology because energy psychology basically is a collection of methods, all of which are aware of deeper different levels of responsiveness in the human being that we’re not usually taking into account. And then those could be the kind, the kind of energy when we speak of energy there. It’s the kind that used in acupuncture or acupressure. It is on the meridians. The meridians you can’t see, and you can’t measure them very well. They’re beginning to measure them to some degree, but they can’t measure them very well and they are called energy therapies because they use these various energies in different ways and there many of them and some of them may be effective for a certain condition and another might not. But I am a specialist in EFT as Sebastiaan had said and I know that very well. And I know a couple of the others and use them.

And but, most of them I don’t use all energy therapies because I don’t find all energy therapies are easy to use or necessarily as effective as others for a particular person in a particular circumstance. So, EFT which is my special method, you might say. And my specialty is a method based on derivative derived from acupuncture and the acupressure, those, the points that were located some of them thousands of years ago by the, in China.

Now, the acupuncture points have been verified as I say for a long, long time and are very well mapped out in a very well-known and they were, it was discovered in the last century the 1900s, mid 1900s, that in fact the energy, energy therapies or rather in fact tapping. We didn’t want to use acupuncture needles for this but that tapping could on certain spots which were identified could greatly reduce anxiety very fast. I mean within if it works well within seconds it can reduce anxiety. You feel it all over you. You feel it in your body. You feel the sudden quieting down and reassuring that goes on when those particular acupuncture points have simply been tapped by your fingertips and it uses that tapping which this is the ingenious part of it, at the same time that it reminds you of the thing little by little in very gentle manageable doses. It reminds you of the situation that you fear. Meeting such and such a person in a in a certain restaurant, going to a certain kind of gathering. Some for some people even talking on the telephone and it’s for under certain circumstances will cause extreme anxiety and you let a little bit of the anxiety in at the same time that you’re doing these quieting techniques.

Well, now that’s a different story. Yes, you do have to refer to them or else you wouldn’t know what you with were there for. Why were you consulting this specialist or whatever if they’re not gonna address the issue at all?

You have to address the issue. But very gently and non-forcing and at the same time giving you, this a method that is reducing anxiety, calming you, making you feel all is well. And I admit, it makes you feel it on a very deep level. You can say it too and that’s a good idea. It is a good idea, but it can be on a very deep level that you’re experiencing relaxation of a… Isn’t just relaxation, it is a calming targeted calming of the fear centers. That if you feel the fear going down and the adrenaline system is reduced, and you are at the same time bringing in a memory.

It’s obviously a memory of because you’re not experiencing that, or you might be that is anxiety but it’s too, you’re experiencing some of it because you’ve been mentioning the situation and just by mentioning it, you bring it up. It’s like putting clothes and a laundry in a washing machine. You have to put the clothes in before they can be cleaned off, but you don’t have to, it doesn’t have to be a traumatic situation.

And if you just take the clothes, the laundry and put it somewhere and look at it, you’re not going to get very far and that’s what you’re being asked to do in an exposure therapy. Just go there, look at it, face it. Well, if that worked, it would have worked long ago, and we wouldn’t have some of the pathological categories that we have today and some of the problems. So, I hope I’ve explained, I don’t have to tell you what the spots are in EFT. I, there plenty of ways you could find that out. You can always go to my site and get a free video that will teach you EFT.

My site, I will mention and then I don’t have to mention it excessively after this is my name Pat Harrington. I don’t use Patricia’s too long to use for the name of a website. So, I say Pat Carrington. P-a-t C-a-r-r-i-n-g-t-o-n. Carrington@, Carrington@. No, no, excuse me, it, isn’t @. I’m not giving you an email. It’s patcarrington.com c-o-m. That’s all. That’s just simple very simple.

Sebastiaan: Okay. Good.

So, what I hear you say Pat is that with the tapping you might be afraid of you know, having a conversation with someone on the phone and just by thinking about having a conversation on the phone that already brings up the anxiety response for you and then when you start to stimulate these acupressure points that brings in a calming signal into the body and these, you know, this kind of gives you the relaxation feeling, the calming feeling and that’s, that’s how it is different from exposure therapy.

Because exposure therapy is…

Dr. Pat Carrington: Yes, that’s right.

Now, some sometimes exposure therapy is used along with relaxation therapy but there’s no ordinary relaxation therapy is pretty cumbersome and doesn’t work nearly as well or as nearly as rapidly as the EFT.

It’s good. I mean if you’re gonna do exposure therapy you should introduce, and they’ve experimentally shown that they get better results with their own therapy if they can introduce relaxation. But they’re not, they don’t have the courage yet to introduce EFT because EFT was declared unproven for a long time by the American Psychological Association. Very, very influential body of professionals. And it now is reaching approval status. They finally got so many research studies which is their criteria, not just clinical reports but research studies that show all kinds of physical changes with tapping. Changes in stabilizing blood pressure, heart rate, amount of adrenaline produced, you know, all that it’s been proven now that it goes down, down significantly when you do you the tapping.

Now, that they’ve got that proof, they are going to be, and it will be within I think next couple of years at least that they will approve. They now even admit that it is a well-established by research and they will move over and say it’s an approved behavioral therapy. They’re called behavioral because it doesn’t include, it’s not supposed to include inside of course it does, but it’s not supposed to be doing that.

So, it’ll be a proof but it’s going through the whole… Much of behavior therapy and relaxation therapy took 16 years relaxation therapy to be accepted by the authorities and they didn’t believe that relaxation did anything till there was a massive amount of evidence. So, new techniques, doesn’t make any difference what they are they may be in medicine, they might be in technology. They’re not necessarily going to be technologies different but we’re talking about the Health Sciences and they’re very cautious. They are afraid they might kill somebody, you know, do something wrong. So, they get over cautious and they’re over cautious about EFT and I think that the places like what is that site… Wikipedia. For example, which is very much consulted when it shouldn’t be about new therapies. It is extremely conservative. It is prejudiced in the favor of being safe.

So, if something has not been officially approved by a certain body of professionals say Wikipedia will say is what, what is the word they say?

Sebastiaan: Pseudoscience.

Dr. Pat Carrington: Pseudoscience. Now, it isn’t pseudoscience. It may not meet all the criteria which have been thrown at it. Which are very, very strict by the way. Almost impossible to me. There’s so strict compared to the way they treat some other established techniques. But there’s nothing pseudo about it. It’s just not, not fully established yet because it’s so expensive. Cost literally millions of dollars to get a product that is for health purposes approved. And it does it for, it’s you have to spend money for elaborate studies. They have to be made in a certain way and all that. This is almost prohibitive, but it isn’t pseudo. Nothing pseudo about it.

So, that shows prejudice. I mean the word pseudo is a derogative term. You don’t say that for something that you respect.

Sebastiaan: Yeah.

Dr. Pat Carrington: And so, it’s disrespectful. That’s what I would say.

Sebastiaan: And very unfortunate because people type in EFT and one of the first things that comes up is the Wikipedia post and then people are like well this is my mental health and here it says that it’s pseudoscience. So, it’s a, it’s a risky thing for me to try out. Right?

Dr. Pat Carrington: Well, I don’t think Wikipedia doesn’t know that.

Sebastiaan: Yeah.

Dr. Pat Carrington: There must be a lot of finagling behind the scenes. I don’t know. I can’t say for sure. But I do know that, that there’s a lot of pressure. And that Wikipedia is under pressure to sustain the status quo. And it has a way of doing that which is to call anything that is daring and new and effective and exciting pseudo. You just call it pseudo and try to prove that you’re not pseudo. They could tell me that I’m not Pat Carrington, that I’m pseudo Pat Harrington and I’ll have a hard time proving it.

Sebastiaan: Yeah.

Dr. Pat Carrington: I mean I could, I guess my, mine birth certificate and some other documents but it wouldn’t be easy when once Wikipedia said it, “Oh, she’s a pseudo person. Don’t worry about her”.

Sebastiaan: So, if we Wikipedia is, let’s just say that they do that to be extra cautious. Is there a reason for it? Like are there any downsides to EFT?

Dr. Pat Carrington: I don’t know of any particular downside to EFT. It can be they can be like an occasional patient in any therapy in the world. Either mental therapy that is working or emotional therapy or physical therapies. This has an occasional adverse reaction. You can, you have a certain percentage of every drug ever invented, it has adverse reactions. But that is because it’s if it is a well, well established and used by many people productively, that’s what you need because it can always be a person whose own system reacts negatively something.

So, I suppose once, and I have not received that ever. I have had a few people that didn’t react, didn’t react one way or the other particularly the tapping. They said, “Well, doesn’t seem do much good”. And that’s very, very, very rare one and many, many hundreds that I have encountered and used in groups. And we’re over the internet or wherever. Very rare. Whereas some other therapies are not very rare. You can get a certain predictable number of people that are going to react negatively.

So, I would say for all practical purposes compared to any other drug or intervention that one might use. It’s on the very, very low negative side. Everything has but because of the status you can’t predict the status of the patient receiver.

Sebastiaan: Yep. Personally, I’ve done many, many EFT sessions myself. Like I have received them, and I’ve given about five thousand and I haven’t had any person either that had a you know, a real downside to it. Yeah, there’s, there’s sometimes that you tune into some more intense stuff but that’s been great to use the EFT on. So, I wouldn’t really call that a downside at all. And what you, what you described some people it hasn’t worked on. I’ve had people who were kind of numb to their emotions who didn’t really respond to the typical standard EFT tapping but you know, with, with various adjustments they were still able to get results. You know, and, and the tapping then kind of like you know, inner child work for example and then the, the tapping would like there’s something called the matrix reprinting in the EFT community. That’s then been helpful for them. So, you know, I’ve not seen any downsides either. So, Patricia how old are you? What’s your age?

Dr. Pat Carrington: I’m 93. I’m 93.

Sebastiaan: Okay.

Dr. Pat Carrington: Which is kind of ridiculous.

Sebastiaan: Yeah, that’s great.

Dr. Pat Carrington: Yeah, I’m not on any medications and I work full-time and I have a practice. It’s very active and very exciting and I’m always at the forefront of new things. I love it.

Sebastiaan: Brilliant. And how long have you been in practice?

Dr. Pat Carrington: Oh, gosh. Let me see. I was… I get my profession, no, license probably when I was 35 and you can subtract if you want to.

Sebastiaan: Wow.

Dr. Pat Carrington: I don’t know 60 years. I don’t know what it is. It’s unimportant. I think because some of the early things I still use. I was trained originally in psychoanalytic, psychotherapy. I still use some of the principles of it, but I use it along with EFT. I use it along with energy therapy. And it is incredibly more effective, and it originally was when I first encountered it.

Sebastiaan: That’s great. Yeah. This, it mixes so well with other things, doesn’t it? With others therapist?

Dr. Pat Carrington: Oh, it’s perfect with other things. Yeah. And that’s a very good use of it, using the right things. And if you are using it with some what they call talk therapy. Of course, you got to talk. What are you gonna do? Muscle the person? So, they don’t speak, don’t talk about what, what bothers them, or they have to, and they need to understand it too. And you can mix it with all kinds of coaching and all kind, all kinds of interventions. Wonderfully flexible.

Sebastiaan: And this is a bit of a what is in your opinion more effective to overcome social anxiety EFT or exposure therapy or rather why is more effective one then the other?

Dr. Pat Carrington:

EFT is a hands-down more effective than exposure therapy. Exposure therapy has a pretty… And I was a researcher for years and I was looking reviewing some of the research because I knew I was coming on today talk to you. And I see that that EFT, that exposure therapy has what I call very weak support.

It’s very flippy-floppy. They spend a lot of money and have a lot of patients in this study which makes it look more about valid. You have 100 patients, 200 patients, 500 patients it looks much better than if you have 20 patients. But it isn’t necessarily, and you have to look at the statistics very carefully and you have to look at the methodology very carefully. There’s nothing that is that impressive, real impressive results you can get with EFT. But you cannot get them, and you never do hear them. They’re all very tiptoe very cautious. You know, they can’t make this statement, they can’t make that statement that kind of thing. It’s not, it’s not a good picture, the, the evidence. It’s very flimsy in my opinion as a researcher looking at it from that standpoint. Not even looking at it in therapeutic way. But just looking at the evidence is weak.

Sebastiaan: And why do you think it’s so effective EFT for anxiety, for social anxiety?

Dr. Pat Carrington: Well, social anxiety is a complex kind of anxiety. Not as simple as being afraid of a spider or airplane ride. It’s not as simple as that. That can be handled obviously more quickly. Usually, although, you can speak to that better than I do because I’m not a specialist.

Sebastiaan: I’m with you so far.

Dr. Pat Carrington: On social anxiety.

Sebastiaan: Yeah.

Dr. Pat Carrington: Yeah. So, how… I’m gonna ask you and I’m interested. How much, how many sessions do you think the average? And there’s no real average because social anxiety has, is a broad spectrum of fears.

Sebastiaan: Exactly.

Dr. Pat Carrington: And so, you can’t really say, “This patient has social anxiety”. Well, they may have social anxiety and they may have other kinds of anxiety at the same time and they may have other problems which can be really faced very nicely. Addictions say something like that which all which relate to anxiety and stem from it. But are not directly there. So, it’s very hard to say how many sessions it would take and there is no answer that is a blanket answer. That’s where the behavioral therapists get so often their research. They don’t take account of individual differences and individual differences is the name of the game in my opinion and my experience.

Sebastiaan: Yeah. That indeed makes it very difficult to predict. It’s you know, I do free 20-minute intro chats half an hour intro chats with people to see, you know, to get to know each other and see…

Dr. Pat Carrington: Right.

Sebastiaan: You know, how well we drive together and whether I’m the right person to help them because I specialize in social anxiety and social anxiety alone. And it often goes in conjunction with a bit of depression. Well, a bit of depression is okay but if people are you know, severely depressed or suicidal and they have social anxiety, you know, then I’m not the right person to help them.

Dr. Pat Carrington: And that’s right.

Sebastiaan: Yeah. And as you say social anxiety tends to be a complex anxiety. That’s true. And it can be like it is often linked with low self-esteem and perfectionism and like you said sometimes addictions and it can be quite complex. But the most popular question that I get in the intro chats. So, popular that I already answered and before people ask it is “How long will it take to overcome my social anxiety? How many sessions?”

And I always answer, “Well, I cannot accurately predict that because it depends on your situation, how much resistance there is, your past, the complexity of it, you know, your life circumstances”. Yada-yada-yada so many circumstances. But I can give you the averages based upon you know, I’ve been doing this for eight years solely working with people with social anxiety and that’s about 30-35 percent resolves their social anxiety in three sessions and for some people it takes longer.

However, for the people that it takes longer for they will get you know, almost all of them amazing results within those three sessions. And if they don’t, there’s, there’s more going on, you know. And I don’t think that…

Dr. Pat Carrington: That’s an excellent answer. If I was the person calling you I would feel that’s very solid that you’re able you’re willing to tell me what’s your experience is.

Sebastiaan: Good. Yep. So, Patricia if EFT is so effective why isn’t it more well-known?

Dr. Pat Carrington: For the same reason I was saying that Wikipedia has its reactionary reaction to it where it’s under suspicion and it is not sanctioned yet, it will be. It’s very much closer to being but it’s not sanctioned by the medical or psychological powers that be they recognized institutions. It’s becoming used by them. It’s becoming they have admitted that the research is good. They have admitted that and that’s the first big, big, big step. They will move on, but it won’t be and if this does protect the public against all kinds of wild claims. But it also creates much prejudice and there is a prejudice against EFT which is no longer matter, and it never was just a part. It just didn’t have its counter evidence, positive evidence.

Now it has a lot of compound counter positive evidence. But it’s a lag, it’s a cultural lag. It hasn’t taken and therefore the big spreaders of the word and the people who create the atmosphere that we live in and talk on media. They are not yet educated to think of EFT as anything but what Wikipedia says a pseudoscience. May be a kind of promising one but a pseudoscience.

Sebastiaan: Yeah.

Dr. Pat Carrington: It’s not a pseudoscience, it is a proven technique now.

Sebastiaan: Yeah.

Dr. Pat Carrington: And it just is a cultural lag. We call it the cultural lag. It is preventing it be, no, but the minute the cultural lag is overcome I think you’ll see a widespread interest in EFT.

Sebastiaan: I think so too.

Dr. Pat Carrington: A lot of.

Sebastiaan: And you know, I say why isn’t it more popular because according to me it is you know, from my perspective and just about you know, everyone in the EFT world of course. When you’ve experienced it for yourself and it is so effective you experience it with your clients. We’re just if you get the personal experience if you, if you’re used to okay, changing your thoughts or having a little insight or you know, you go do some deep breathing or something you think that that gives you a good effect, if comparatively you get a shift with EFT you know, you have your world rocked.

And now, you’re a fan and a supporter and now you know without a shadow of a doubt that this is amazing and so then you become a supporter of it because I was the biggest skeptic in the beginning as well. So, I say you know, why isn’t it more popular? It is popular but not to the degree that I think it can and will be. Because it is you know…

Dr. Pat Carrington: No. Nothing like it and not used in schools where it should be and all of that.

Sebastiaan: Right.

Dr. Pat Carrington: It’s beginning to be. We know it can be, but I don’t think any new thing, if you really look back at its early history and I say early history being its first 25, 30, 40 years, it’s going to show great excitement and popularity among the widespread public. It just won’t.

Sebastiaan: Yeah. And…

Dr. Pat Carrington: It just the way things to do.

Sebastiaan: Yeah. And do you think that, I think so as something to do with the fact that it just looks strange and it’s…

Dr. Pat Carrington: Yeah, it does.

Sebastiaan: And it’s not cool yet, you know.

Dr. Pat Carrington: Exactly.

Sebastiaan: The cool kids are not tapping on their face yet and they’re like, “Yeah, man. I’m doing EFT”. Right? Once that happens, yeah.

Dr. Pat Carrington: Well in some schools in South America where some excellent practitioners have introduced EFT to the teachers, who’ve introduced it to the children, it is cool. And when it is… My God, that you can’t stop the spread of it. You know how kids spread good things to each other. They spent some bad things sometimes, but they can also spread good things.

Sebastiaan: Yeah.

Dr. Pat Carrington: And it goes around like wildfire and they love it.

Sebastiaan: Yeah.

Dr. Pat Carrington: And in areas with where they’ve had in people going psychologists and other professionals and those trained specifically in EFT going into the areas we’ve been disasters. Wars, massacres whatever. And helping or natural disasters and helping to rebalance the population. It has become absolutely almost like worshipped by those people because of the help they got.

Now, that is the kind of thing that eventually will become part of folklore and people will just know you turn to EFT. And you may not and you now they’re new forms of it. It’s addressing new things. You can do it more quickly this way, you could do it this way and that kind of thing. And people who are expert at bringing EFT to the rest of those who don’t know it will be very respected. It’s not true yet, that’s all.

Sebastiaan: Yeah. Great. It’s growing, and you see it appearing more and more in you know, important magazines. It’s been on you know, Dr. Oz and Huffington Post. And you know, I don’t really keep track of all the magazines that it is in because it’s, it shows up more and more. And it seems to be expanding and evolving also in Nick Ortner’s yearly EFT tapping summit. It keeps I think growing or doubling in numbers every year. So, yeah, it is growing so that’s good.

Last question, Patricia. If someone had been told that they can only overcome their social anxiety by changing their thoughts and forcing themselves to face their fears and they haven’t been able to achieve success using this approach, what would you say to them?

Dr. Pat Carrington: I would add some… First ask them, first, what different things have you used? What approaches? And I try to get them to really tell me because they may have used formal approaches that they were they went to a practitioner or they may have used informal approaches when they asked all their friends. I don’t know but I want to know always what have you done that didn’t work? And usually by the time they come for an energy therapy and it could be EFT, they have used an awful lot of things, they’ve tried. Say if they tried a whole… If they tried none of them that doesn’t mean that EFT won’t be wonderful. In fact, they’re cutting out of trouble by not by not using certain ones, it probably wouldn’t work anyhow.

So, why use them? But the fact is that you’re going to hear about a lot of tries probably. And they haven’t been able to use success with them in a very tiny, tiny proportion of cases. They’re just almost non-treatable. And this, some people are so mired in and down and so bogged down in negativity is they won’t let any therapy, they can’t. But any therapy works, and you get that once in a while, but you don’t usually.

And I think that’s a very excellent percentage for any intervention whether it be medical or psychological or educational, doesn’t make any difference. That’s a high percent. And I think that you do get that. And at my observation you’d have to have a very dumb unenlightened kind of person trying to teach you in order to produce a bad result.

Sebastiaan: Right. So, and would you say 80% that is for when they, when they tried themselves or when they work with a practitioner?

Dr. Pat Carrington: No, no. Not when they try it themselves, you didn’t really as I thought of thinking when they try it with the person, 80% getting results. I don’t know what the percentage is because I’m one of the people and they’ve already tried it with the person if they try it with me. Let me see, whether there’s any study that I know of what happened when they’re taught… I can’t imagine we don’t get at least 50%, 40% something like that. You won’t get the nuances of it.

And as I say social anxiety has many nuances, so you really should have a person. And it’s useful because by dealing with another person who’s a therapist, you’re dealing indirectly with the type of social anxiety. You have an anxiety towards them.

Sebastiaan: Exactly.

Dr. Pat Carrington: And that can be useful.

Sebastiaan: Yeah.

Dr. Pat Carrington: I think. Yeah.

Sebastiaan: Okay, great. Patricia if there was something that I could have asked we would have which would have allowed you to share something important what would I have asked and how would you have answered it?

Dr. Pat Carrington: I suppose that you could have asked and didn’t think of this but I’m thinking about that with what do you think EFT will morph into? Everything is changing in our world. We’re discovering enormous things. What are we going to be using that will enhance EFT? I think that would have been in question.

Sebastiaan: Okay.

Dr. Pat Carrington: Which would have opened up some other answers because there are things no doubt about it. My whole practice and particularly today when I’m really experimenting with, so many things is that of combining EFT with other methods and one of them, one of them is isn’t an EFT method. The EFT choices method. And that if anybody knows EFT now and wants to learn the choices method all you have to do is go to my website which I gave you patcarrington.com and you will find. And Google “EFT choices method” and you will get the choices method which takes you in my opinion its lightyears ahead of just plain old original EFT.

We’re all evolving, we’re evolving. So, if you know it already that would be a next step that could be invaluable because it brings in the positive. It helps you reinforce them and enhance what’s already going right. Your good experiences that you begin to have with social anxiety treatment can be enhanced. There’s all kind of ways. There’s some new ways that I’m about to introduce but I haven’t so I can’t really talk very productively about them right now. It’s to you. But I would say this is the improvements are going on by the drove. The excitement about adding this thing. Combining it with spirituality is a wonderful, wonderful amazing intervention. And it is growing, growing by leaps and bounds with people like Carol Look and myself and others. And Gary Craig the original founder of the EFT is now heavily into its used on a spiritual level.

And I think that is so obvious next step for many who use it. That I would say the growth of EFT is going to be exponential once it gets going. And it will combine with other things and it will become part of our heritage, our cultural heritage for every child. When it does you’ll see a world change because absence of fear and strengthI interviewed leading psychologist and EFT Energy Psychology pioneer Dr. Patricia Carrington, PhD. She shares the difference between EFT and exposure therapy. And we look at what might be a far more effective approach to overcoming social anxiety than the “face your fears approach”. I interviewed leading psychologist and EFT Energy Psychology pioneer Dr. Patricia Carrington, PhD. She shares the difference between EFT and exposure therapy. And we look at what might be a far more effective approach to overcoming social anxiety than the “face your fears approach”. and confidence in oneself and love of oneself is a tremendous force. And we are actually working to change the world in that respect.

Sebastiaan: Wonderful. That’s a nice way to end this, this brilliant talk. Thank you so much Pat. I really appreciate you coming on and sharing, sharing your wisdom. Thank you so much.

Dr. Pat Carrington: I loved it. Yeah.

Sebastiaan: Nice.

Dr. Pat Carrington: It was great.

Sebastiaan: Nice.

Dr. Pat Carrington: Thank you for having me.

Sebastiaan: Yeah.

Dr. Pat Carrington: And very, very, very fine future for you in helping people with EFT all over the place. I know they are doing that so that’s wonderful.

Sebastiaan: Thank you.

Dr. Pat Carrington: Great.

Sebastiaan: Thank you.

Dr. Pat Carrington: All right. Bye now.

Sebastiaan: Bye now.

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