Energy Psychotherapy For The Third Millennium

Meridian Therapies

Energy Psychotherapy for the Third Millennium

by Susan Courtney

Every limiting thought, upsetting feeling and memory is associated with a disturbance in our energy system. Meridian Therapies release blocks and restore the free flow of life energy to heal our minds, hearts, bodies, and souls. 

 Searching for Deep Healing

A few moments before, I had been washing the kitchen floor in preparation for my mother’s arrival at Heathrow the next morning for the Christmas holidays. But after the friend who phoned me that night suggested I tap on a few acupuncture points, I found tears rolling down my cheeks as I realised what I was doing - no amount of house-cleaning was going to change the fact that I would never again see my father push the luggage trolley through that customs door, smiling as he sought my face in the welcoming crowd.

My father had died the previous spring. I sighed with relief and let the healing tears flow easily, honouring my father’s absence, my loss, and my living connection with him. That winter’s night several years ago was the turning point in my acceptance of the energy therapies. When a respected colleague from the Continent first introduced me to them, I had argued vehemently against any technique which purported to change people’s feelings about their problems in an instant, certain that they must involve some kind of disrespectful and manipulative trickery rather than the deep healing I had been seeking.  

I had wanted to change myself since I was very young. At the age of 7, I sat high in a tree, arguing with God about the design fault which caused human’s primary motivation to be fear. A thousand hours of various therapies and long professional training in counselling and psychotherapy later, and still my objective of feeling whole and inner-directed, spontaneous and aware, connected with other people and present in reality eluded me. Even my search for the process by which I might align myself in these directions had proved frustrating. I was entangled in internal conflict, hindered by self-sabotage, my motivation undermined by low self-esteem and an underlying sense of futility.  

A New Beginning

That December night was the beginning for me. The beginning of finding my way, and the understanding that here was something extraordinary for me to explore.   What are these techniques which achieve such dramatic results so quickly and thoroughly? I found that Energy Psychology and Meridian-based Psychotherapy and Counselling are rooted in both clinical psychology and psychotherapy and Traditional Chinese Medicine. The first of these new approaches, Thought Field Therapy (TFT), was developed more than twenty years ago by California psychologist Dr Roger Callahan. Callahan had been treating a lady so phobic of water that she could only bear to bathe with an inch of water in the tub and had to close the curtains when it rained. Eighteen months of conventional treatment had made little difference. But the day Dr Callahan reached over and tapped on an acupuncture point under Mary’s eye, she stood up in amazement, said “Dr Callahan, the fear - it’s gone!” and ran outside to the swimming pool to splash her face with water. That evening she walked along the beach, up to her knees in the waves of the Pacific. Her favourite holiday is now aboard a cruise ship and twenty years on, the fear has never come back.  

The New Paradigm

Since then, more and more innovative therapists have moved into this rapidly expanding field and new approaches are constantly being developed, including EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques), BSFF (Be Set Free Fast), TAT (Tapas Acupressure Technique), EdxTM (Energy Diagnostic and Treatment Methods), and many others. What all the new Energy Therapies share is the understanding that all emotional distress is ultimately caused, held in place, and re-triggered because of a disturbance in the subtle energy system. From this follows the possibility that distress can be resolved by restoring balance and harmony to that system.  And that has, indeed, proved to be the case. Thousands of professional therapists from all around the world are using these techniques successfully on a daily basis to help clients free themselves from a wide range of problems: overwhelming feelings and depression, phobias, traumatic memories and nightmares, obsessions and compulsions, addictions, sexual problems, managing substance sensitivities and pain, and blocks to peak performance, to name only a few. The techniques are suitable for working with clients of all ages and integrate well with other healing modalities. Following the lead of more physically oriented approaches, such as Donna Eden’s Energy Medicine, eminent clinicians such as Dr Fred Gallo are publishing books in the Energy Psychology field for self-help, as well as for practitioners.  

Power to the People: Self-Treatment

An exceptional aspect of the new Energy Therapies is the fact that they can readily be used for self-treatment, for occasions when we are stressed or anxious – fear of public speaking, is a common application - or for on-going problems such as addictive cravings, weight loss, and depression where relief is so sorely needed at home and on a regular basis. For more complex or severe emotional issues, an experienced therapist can help to unravel the different factors and aspects involved and provide the therapeutic relationship of safety, acceptance and perspective in which change can happen most effectively.  

Correcting Self-Sabotage

One of the greatest gifts of the Energy Therapies is Dr. Callahan’s concept of Psychological Reversal. Most of us are familiar with feeling that we know we could and should be doing things differently, but can’t seem to motivate ourselves, or stick with it, or worse, we find that we sabotage our own efforts. And many of us compound that problem by feeling guilty or ashamed that we just don’t have enough will-power to do it anyway. In the Energy Therapy paradigm, all these things can be seen as manifestations of a reversal of some kind in our energy system. When that is corrected (and this simple correction may need to be self-treated repeatedly, especially when working with depression, addictions or chronic physical ailments) we can congruently move forward again. No more will-power required, and we need no longer fear guilt or shame, either.  

Accelerating Therapeutic Change

For therapists and clients alike, one of the benefits of working with these therapies is that they accelerate the process of change. My experience in years of therapy was a bit like watching a film, just one frame at a time, each week, with the story line and its flashbacks frequently interrupted by current events and shifting concerns. It could take months before even a single theme unfolded enough to make sense of my experience of it in scenes from the past and of its relevance to my present difficulties. Using energy therapies, it becomes possible to unravel the aspects of an experience, and unpeel many layers of associated emotions in the course of each session, giving both client and therapist the satisfaction of achieving successful change which brings noticeable results.   Some problems can be treated as quickly as Mary’s water phobia. This is not as surprising as it first appears when we consider that most of our problems can be traced to a root cause event. Others may require time to explore problems more fully before finding the precise target for treatment.   In one therapy session, Kathy (name changed) described the anxiety she felt walking down the street, constantly on the look out for people she’d been intimidated by in the past, not sure whether her fear was of her own repressed anger or of further victimisation. Following two short tapping sequences, she was able to perceive a school teacher she’d had a run in with about one of her children, not as the bully she’d been, but as a rather pathetic creature, scurrying along the pavement like a beetle. During the course of our work together, Kathy also became able to manage contact with her ex-husband, a brutal and dominating man, from whom she had previously cowered in terror.   No need to re-live past pain Partly because change can occur quite rapidly, energy therapies are also gentle, with no need to re-live the traumas of the past in order to transform the patterns they have created in our lives. There are literally thousands of case histories of war veterans, emergency service workers, and victims of abuse, attacks, accidents and disasters who have freed themselves from years of post-traumatic suffering. Trauma is one of the most satisfying areas for the application of Energy Therapies, because relief is so immediate, so outstanding.  

I encourage anyone who is interested in healing, be it on a personal or professional level, to take a closer look at the tremendously exciting emerging field of Energy Therapies. They have provided me with the most powerful tools for transformation on my own path to deeper personal healing and give me the enormous satisfaction of greater effectiveness in my work as a healing psychotherapist for others.   Susan Courtney has a private practice in Kent and London and leads practitioner certification trainings and personal development workshops in London, Kent, and the Cotswolds through the Centre for Energy Psychotherapy.  

She can be contacted on 08700 767015, at courtney@truechange.org   She is a director and licensed trainer for the Association for Meridian Therapies, which certifies courses throughout the country - please see http://TrueChange.org

For further information on meridian therapies and energy psychology, see the GoE website at http://TheAMT.com