Testimonials - TFT Worldwide

Thought Field Therapy with Dissociative Identity Disorder
By Elizabeth Niederer, Copyright 1998

Thought Field Therapy 2 Year Treatment Follow-Up (1998)

As of this writing, it’s been a little over two years since Dr. Diepold introduced me to Thought Field Therapy. We’ve used this incredible treatment for a number of problems in my life, ranging from toxic sensitivities to phobias, chronic pain, headaches, and especially various traumatic memories and trauma-related symptoms.

One of our recent successes was in treating my phobia of ticks. Since acquiring a dog, I was confronted all too often with the objects of my fear! Before the EvTFT treatment, I couldn’t remove a tick from my dog, and I screamed and made a scene when I found one on my leg. Using the most common treatment algorithm for phobias, my fear level dropped from 9.5 to 4 within moments. Then Dr. Diepold had me treat the same energy meridian points, but this time on the opposite side of my body from where I first tapped on each treatment point. Suddenly my fear was gone, zero. Since then, I’ve been able to fearlessly remove ticks both from my dog and myself!

An interesting footnote to the tick phobia treatment is that I simultaneously lost my fear of spiders, which was nearly as strong as my fear of ticks. This, too, has been tested several times as I’ve encountered spiders in my home and garden. I suppose that because ticks and spiders are related species, there might be some similarity in the energy fields my phobias generated. Such considerations aside, I’m enjoying a new freedom to be in my garden and with my animals without the nagging worry that I might encounter one of those “awful critters!”

Participating in EvTFT has awakened my awareness of my body/mind in a special way. I’m learning to become aware of my own energy, and to some degree, that of others, as well. I find myself affected by the energy I sense in certain people, which leads me to sometimes feel like a “sponge” that soaks up other people’s emotions, or a finely tuned energy system that reacts to others’ perturbations. It’s difficult to describe, and there may well be no scientific explanation for my experience, but I know that something happens at that level.

The positive side of this increased awareness is that I can often sense when I am reacting to a substance in the environment, even without a muscle test to prove it. I’ve learned to scrupulously avoid the aisles of cleaning and laundry products in the environment, for example, and I’ve become more aware of foods that provoke a negative reaction.

We’ve treated some of these substance sensitivities, with excellent results. One that especially bothered me was a pine-scented cleaner. It took several days of repeating the established treatment, but my system eventually stabilized, so that now I can be around pine cleaners without getting anxious or upset.

The same was true of sensitivity to garlic. Before treatment, I craved garlic, even though I had cold sweats and diarrhea every time I ate it. After EvTFT treatment, the craving disappeared, and eventually I could tolerate small amounts of garlic, such as those found in prepared sauces or spice mixtures, with no problems. I lost my fondness for certain kinds of garlicky foods, especially Chinese, which before treatment I often craved in spite of the fact that I got migraines (in addition to the other symptoms) when I ate Chinese food. Prior to this treatment, not even the fear of getting a migraine was enough to overpower my craving for Chinese food, nor was the knowledge that I’d surely have an intestinal upset sufficient to deter me from my favorite garlic-laden pasta sauce. I felt like a self-sabotaging fool for being this way, but the craving for garlic was as strong in some ways as an addiction. What a relief to be free from that compulsion!

I am especially delighted to follow up on the treatment, nearly two years ago now, of my suicidal and self-mutilating obsessions. As I wrote previously, I was tormented continuously by thoughts of death and suicide, as well as by intense feelings of self-hatred and the compulsion to injure myself. Through a single long EvTFT session, I was-to use a religious term-set free from this bondage!

It took a little time to get used to the change. I sometimes found myself thinking of dying or hurting myself out of habit, or so it seemed, in the first few weeks after the treatment. But instead of being drawn into a fixation on those thoughts, I was repelled by them. In time, I learned some new coping skills and ways of thinking about myself, some through further therapy, and some, I believe, simply by being free to observe the worlds around me in a different light. When I was trapped in that old way of thinking and being, I was deaf and blind to other options.

Now, when I look back to the way I used to be, it’s almost like looking at a different person-though I carry the scars that remind me of how things used to be. However, I can’t remember the last time I entertained thoughts of dying or hurting myself. I consider myself cured both of my suicidality and my obsession with self-mutilation! How often can therapists or clients make that claim?

EvTFT has proven to be a Godsend for me, and I tell everyone about it who mentions a need for or interest in therapy or counseling. Strangely, many people whom I tell about EvTFT react with suspicion, disbelief or outright disdain. Once I was chatting online in a fibromyalgia/chronic pain support group, and when I told them I had gotten better pain reduction with EvTFT than with any medical or behavioral strategies and attempted to describe the treatment, the group threw me out of their chat room!

A similar response has been prevalent in my “live” support group for women with DID. Both individually and as a group, they nearly all responded negatively when I told them that it is possible to process the ghastly memories of abuse or trauma without reliving them in abreactions. Sadly, some of these women seem to have been educated to believe they have to recall and relive all the memories and all the suffering before they can get well.

I don’t understand this attitude. Are these women conditioned by current therapeutic thinking to feel this way? That would be tragic.

I had some initial concerns about EvTFT based on my religious persuasions, having been indoctrinated to fear any treatment or process with roots in Eastern medicine (such as acupuncture) as being evil or demonic in origin. But the idea of healing the past without having to recall every detail or relive every trauma was attractive enough to me to overcome those initial fears.

I thought some of our initial successes were “too good to be true,” but the evidence speaks for itself: Traumas we treated with conventional therapy and trance work often came back to haunt me. Treatment with EMDR was much more successful, but very draining and often disabling, and some of those memories still came back to haunt me in flashbacks and disjointed “body memories.”

In contrast, memories processed with EvTFT have become whole or “unified,” lost their immediacy and horror and assumed their rightful place-as part of my mostly awful childhood and adolescence, ugly (but not devastating or even unduly upsetting) to recall or retell, but a thing of the past that does not intrude into my present. Many of those memories have been sufficiently “defused” as to be gone from my conscious thought. They are not re-dissociated. I remember them if something reminds me of them, but they have little if any “trigger capacity” any more. I no longer live in fear of being triggered into flashbacks by my environment. There might still be unprocessed memories or traumas that can be triggering, but there are far fewer of them now than there used to be, and I have the wherewithal to cope with them now. I am confident we can deal with them in therapy without days or weeks of agony. What a gift!