Follow-up on EFT in the prison system

by Brian Fowlie

SUBJECT: ANTHONY
AGE: 37
HISTORY: SERVING 15 YEARS-TO-LIFE. INCARCERATED SINCE 1988.

Anthony (henceforth "Tony") initially attended a group session of EFT with fifteen or so other inmates who were asked to close their eyes and assess any bodily discomforts for readings. Tony, who had a headache, reported a level of discomfort that was 7 out of 10 in intensity. His headache was reduced to 2 out of 10 after his first EFT sequence. Another sequence eliminated his discomfort altogether. Also, he stated that, "I also don't feel stressed." For Tony, that point is important. He is an individual of high energy and high stress potential. He is religious about exercising, using weight lifting, jogging, push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, and other strenuous exercises to help maintain his anxiety levels -as do many prisoners. He is an intelligent man, working as an apprentice in one of the prison's more difficult curriculums: electronics. He has been assigned to that, job for many years. Additionally, Tony has made many efforts to deal with emotional issues surrounding his personal life, from past alcohol abuse, to issues involving his family. He is, despite being, in prison, an integral member of his family. He keeps in touch with them through visiting, telephone calls, and letters. He intends to return to his home town and his family when, someday, he is released from prison. During his first personal interview with us, he did not initially indicate that his first issue had to do with his family, a memory of his father. We proceeded into that interview before learning the specifics.

We asked Tony to visualize any event that caused him to feel emotional distress. He reported that he had thought of one and that his emotional stress level was an 9 out of 10. Without any disclosure of the event from Tony, we guided him through a general EFT sequence with a result of his feeling better about the unknown subject, but subsequent visualization of the matter brought his anxiety level to a maximum 10 out of 10 rating. We suspect that the second reading pertained to his having shifted from his initial issue to that of another related issue. We've found with many individuals that shifting is common. Complex issues tend to crosslink with one another. Once an initial stress is calmed, another related stress that is associative and underlying the other will surface. Tony confirmed our suspicions. His original issue of stress remained insignificant, in fact a 0 out of 10. For Tony, another related issue had risen.

The event, as Tony went on to explain, was one from his childhood. He remembered his father being drunk and beating Tony with a belt. As Tony has a deep sense of love for his father, the memory was very painful for him. Perhaps confusing the issue for him, his father has since stopped drinking, yet Tony's memory reminds him of a different time. Further compounding his emotion, during the same event his father also beat Tony's brothers. It's easy to see how Tony, able to calm his anxieties on a personal level about his own beating (after EFT), shifted to underlying anxieties about the pain his brothers suffered during the event.

It was important to us that Tony -and all EFT subjects- understand that the process of EFT should not involve delving into the pain of an issue, rather stopping whenever discomfort brings about a rise in anxiety associated with any issues. Instead of trudging through his story about his father, Tony was instructed to halt whenever he felt his stress level increase. That was also an indication to us that an issue, whether underlying or not, needed addressing. We began to see visible signs of relaxation on Tony's part after going through more of the sequencing. He typically ended a sequence with a sigh, his shoulders slumping after certain rigidity. Within a half hour of beginning the session, Tony was able to talk calmly about the beating. He was so impressed with the result, he asked us to address another issue that had been troubling him for some time.

Tony has a fear regarding the ventilation system in the prison, a system that blows warm or cool air through a grate into his cell. His fear is that the air will stop coming through the grate, that his cell which is closed, locked, and otherwise unventilated- will not be filled with breathable air. He reported to us that the ventilation system has indeed been inoperative on occasions in the past and that when that happens he reacts with uncontrolled intensity. So bad is his fear that, during one event of inoperability of the system, he was allowed to keep his cell door open during the course of the night -an almost unheard of solution (he must have really put the guards through hell to get that done!). Previous to our session, the only way that he knew of contending with an unventilated cell was to take off all of his clothing and to lie, naked, on his bunk. He stated to us that he had to lie perfectly still during those incidents, and his recollections appeared to us to be very intense and unpleasant for him to focus upon.

We worked with Tony for nearly twenty minutes, having him visualize the air going off in his cell. Since we couldn't recreate the conditions of the ventilation breakdown, he had to create the conditions in his own mind, and it took a few runs through the sequence before Tony could think of the problem without feeling it an unbearable one. By the time we finished running the sequences, his anxiety level was reduced to 0 out of ten. An amazing reduction of stress! Tony, in fact, told us that he actually hoped that the air went off in his cell so that he could see how well he would be able to manage his reactions!

Subsequent to our session, Tony remains excited about the results. He asked for the affirmation used during the session, in fact insisted that I write it down for him -which he did, gladly. I was glad to see how happy my fellow inmate had become over issues that had previously caused him terrible emotional upheaval. Tony felt good about releasing himself from the emotion he'd been carrying. He's seriously considering speaking to his father about the incident of the beating, something he'd never have been able to consider before using EFT!

Brian Fowlie

"The feedback I have received has been overwhelming, Gary. I typed out a cheat sheet for Pat [another inmate we dealt with--GC] to carry with him until he gets the hang of it. The air went out and Tony was cool with it. WOW! You'll receive a followup report on that. We really broke some ground here, Gary."