Using EFT on Paranoid Schizophrenia

Here is another interesting article for EFT and I just had to publish it on my site. It gave relief to schizophrenic patient, from the stories I’ve read in the past there is no real cure for people that are schizophrenic.

But EFT gave him relief, thank god. If you like it, try EFT yourself, visit eft.com.

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The Situation

I am a nutritional and energy therapist in London with training in EFT and another energy therapy (called Frontal Eminences which I learned from Applied Kinesiology). Although I don’t usually treat people with schizophrenia, I recently had the opportunity to help “Richard,” whom I have known for many years.

Richard lives alone in a different town from me so my session took most of one day with him. I concentrated on issues that he and his family said made it difficult for him to live in the community.

He has had paranoid schizophrenic symptoms for the last 17 years. In his late teens he saw a psychiatrist who gave him drugs for anxiety and ‘schizophrenic tendencies’. Subsequently his condition got worse and he developed deep paranoia and had some severe psychotic episodes over the next few years.

When I saw him he was agoraphobic and alcohol-dependent. Sometimes he could go outside alone but it was extremely frightening for him. Most days he could only leave his flat by taxi.

He was tormented every moment of the day by terrifying thoughts, voices in his head and memories of past abuse. Some of this was real and some was imagined.

When he does go outside, he shouts aggressively (which is frightening for other people). He has never intentionally hurt anyone but he has often smashed inanimate objects, including other people’s belongings.

He has been on various drug regimes since the early 1980s. Currently he is taking a benzodiazepine, a tricyclic anti-depressant and two neuroleptics, plus some procyclidine to manage the side-effects from the neuroleptics.

Important Note: There was no change in his medication from the time of our session through the 8 week followup that appears at the end of this article.

The Session

After talking generally to establish rapport, we discussed the feelings Richard gets when he shouts in the street. He said he feels ‘terrified, humiliated and fearful’ before he shouts. He expects someone to knife him but he has to shout because God requires it. He searches for the courage to do it and shouts loudly ’25 or 30 times’. He rated his emotional intensity for shouting at 10+.

We talked about the feelings that made him shout in the street and this helped me understand the aspects involved. Many of his ‘memories’ had not actually happened but he believed they had.

First, I used my other energy technique more globally on several aspects of his shouting in the street. This lowered his intensity to 6+. Then we talked about the remaining aspects wherein I learned that he felt very guilty for stabbing a child. I used the basic EFT formula with the 9 gamut procedure on this.

The set-up phrase we used was: ‘Even though I feel really bad because I stabbed a child, I believe God loves me anyway’.

It took ten minutes to find this phrase. He couldn’t say ‘I deeply and completely accept myself’ because not accepting himself is a big part of his problem. It was too painful to say’I know God loves me’. However, saying ‘I believe God loves me’ was okay because he said he wants to believe God loves him.

He needed prompting for each section of the phrase. He said it slightly different each time and added the ‘anyway’ onto the end.

After two rounds of EFT on ‘stabbing a child’, his intensity was down to 3+. He was exhausted and wanted to stop. After 15 minutes more of other meridian work on stabbing a child, his intensity came down to a 2+.

After 15 minutes, we did the ‘Floor to Ceiling’ technique, which brought his emotional intensity right down to 0. He said he felt cleansed and calmer but still exhausted. Then I did half an hour of other meridian work globally on his memory of being locked in a cupboard.

Finally, I gave him some nutritional advice and used another energy therapy on noises that made him perform obsessive compulsive rituals.

Richard’s illness makes it more complex to locate every aspect of a problem. Even so, I felt the session had gone very well. At the end, his intensity levels for everything we had dealt with were at 0. He felt his mind had been healed and he didn’t think he would have any more problems. Then he said ‘This result will hold up as long as I behave myself. If I don’t, it could go back to a 3’. This showed there were still some aspects to clear up.

Follow-Up:

After one week: Richard had been outside alone and had only needed to shout once or twice each time instead of the 25-30 times he did before. He was calmer and hadn’t had any psychotic episodes. He believed his mind had been healed. He sounded more positive and balanced than when I had spoken to him by phone before the session. Surprisingly, his agoraphobia had reduced a bit. (I’d decided not to treat this in the first session in case he went outside more often with some of his abusive behaviour still there).

After two weeks: he still seemed more balanced and more positive than before the treatment. He was looking forward to recovering from his illness and his plans were more practical and self-aware than I’d expected.

After three weeks: the agoraphobia (which I hadn’t treated) had come back but the other positive changes were still in place and he still believed his mind had been healed.

After eight weeks: the positive effects have stayed with him. There is a lot more work to do but after just one session he is calmer, more self-accepting and more in control of his life.

Francesca Hamon

(comment) Instead of eft you can use Faster EFT, which is even faster than standard EFT.