The Tearless Trauma EFT Technique by Gary Craig

Gary Craig’s Tearless Trauma Technique

1. Ask the participants to identify a specific traumatic incident from their past. Ask that it be at least 3 years ago to minimize any complications from the dynamics of a current event.  An example might be, "the time my father punched me when I was 12." By contrast, the phrase "my father abused me" would be too broad because, chances are, the abuse took place over many, many incidents. Please note that you may need to instruct the clients to stay on their original issue because many of them will shift to other issues as they resolve the original one.

2. Ask the participants to GUESS at what their emotional intensity would be (on a 0-10 scale) IF they were to vividly imagine the incident. Instruct them NOT to actually imagine it (although some will close their eyes and do this anyway). This GUESS is a surprisingly useful estimate...and...it serves to minimize emotional pain. Have them write their GUESSES down and then go around the room having them state their number. This gives you a good feel for various participants' intensity.

3. Have the participants develop a phrase to use for the EFT process such as "this father-punch emotion" and then proceed with a round of tapping.

4. After this round of tapping, ask them to GUESS again and go around the room asking them to state their new number. Typically, they report noticeably smaller numbers.

5. Perform more rounds of EFT (or your favourite tapping procedure) and go around the room each time asking for their new numbers. In my experience, a total of 3 or 4 rounds will bring just about everyone down to GUESSES of 0 to 3.

6. Once everyone is down to acceptably low GUESSES, then perform another round of tapping and, after this round, ask them to vividly imagine the incident. Notice that this is the first time you are asking them to do this. All previous times have been relatively painless GUESSES. In my experience, just about everyone goes to zero and the rest are at very low numbers. If there is an exception or two, then work with them individually to complete the process.

©Gary Craig 1999