Mom doing EFT for autistic son yields enormous changes in one month

By Sandra Lewis MA, EFT-Adv

Hi Gary,

I have had a psychotherapy practice in Toronto for many years now, but when I started to use EFT about 6 years ago it was as if I had been treading water up to that point!

I have had many dramatic events in my practice since then, but I wanted to talk about one in particular, because there seems to be such a great need for good news about this condition right now.  My client, Katia, who is happy to share this information with your readers, has a 7-year-old son who was diagnosed many years ago with severe autism.

Her husband quit his job and devoted himself full-time to helping David function as well as might be hoped.  And her husband was certainly able to make a difference, after three years of enormous effort.  But like many parents of autistic children, he began to run out of steam.  It’s a very demanding role for a parent to fill, as you know.

Katia came to me without her son, David, and together she and I worked on some of her frustrations as a parent.  And I gave her some statements to use with David.  We decided that we would work initially on making him more responsive to his parents and less of a challenge to their patience.

Katia told me that David was very sensitive to noise, and would scream and cry when she turned on the blender in the kitchen.  He would also scream in the car if she had the radio on.  The statements she began to use with him were:

Even though the sound of the blender bothers me...

Even though it hurts my head…  

Even though I hate those noises…

Katia also told me that, like many autistic children, David had suffered a trauma when he was born. The doctors had to use a vacuum and then forceps.  Katia couldn’t see this, but she could see the expression on her husband’s face, which went white with anxiety.  As well, he was vaccinated 12 hours after being born.

So we added statements to release this trauma.  

Even though it was terrible when I was born…  

Even though I was afraid…  

Even though it didn’t feel safe when I came into the world…  

Even though it hurt my head…

Katia would tap every evening while David was going to sleep.  She would tap on herself as a surrogate and on him.  She added statements for his speech problems, and his difficulty communicating.

All this time Katia’s husband was away on a trip.  When he returned after one month, he noticed immediately an ‘enormous’ change in his son’s behaviour.  He said he hardly recognized David. These are some of the things he and Katia saw in just one month:

• David’s speech improved dramatically.  He would answer questions, something he never did before, even when they were simple yes or no questions.
• He would ask for things in complete sentences: “I want bread” instead of using one word ‘bread”.
• He started noticing other children and wanting to play with them (before he seemed lost in his own world).
• When he was playing with children, he would follow the rules of the game.
• He was visually focusing on his parents, making conscious eye contact and holding it for minutes at a time (before he would look all around the room, but not at them).
• He was clearly processing information from them when he was making this eye contact (his eyes seemed active instead of vacant).
• He stopped screaming when he heard loud noises, and even asked for the radio to be turned on in the car (in Katia’s words, there was no chance this could happen before… he didn’t like music from any source except TV).
• It was possible to negotiate things with him for the first time, i.e. If you eat this apple, then you can have a cookie.
• He started eating apples… bananas were the only fruit he would eat before.

David's grandfather was away for a month as well, and he agreed that his grandson had made a big shift while he was away.  Normally it might have been difficult to clearly identify EFT as the cause of this change.  But because David’s father, Yuri, was the one who usually worked with him, while Yuri was away, virtually no extra time was spent with David on his autism.  Katia was busy just taking care of the house and preparing meals, and so the only extra time spent with David were the few minutes she devoted to tapping in the evening.

Katia continues to work on David and he continues to make progress.  Interestingly, Katia and Yuri feel that part of their challenge is to work on their own issues; that in some way David is reflecting their own unresolved ‘stuff’.  But right now they both believe that David’s autism can be completely overcome and that his developmental delay is the main thing now holding him back.

Blessings,

Sandra Lewis,

Toronto, Canada