By Colin Ball

Dear Gary and Steve,

I am relatively new to EFT, having discovered it a few months ago from a friend who used it to help me quit smoking. I was so impressed that I have been studying it intensely ever since, as well as practising it on myself and my family. I wanted to share a remarkable recent success I had using EFT on my wife, although I am sure you must have received many like this.

Until recently, my wife routinely demonstrated a moderate to severe fear of spiders (depending on their size) and had been sceptical about my suggestion that EFT might help reduce that fear, even though she had been surprised by apparent EFT success with myself and the children. Recently she uncovered a large spider whilst cleaning the garage and immediately stopped what she was doing and begged me to 'get rid of it' (if I was not around she would have found a way of killing it). I caught the spider and placed it in a large covered glass, and she was visibly frightened when I showed it to her, particularly when I went to remove the cover. I said we could try and reduce her fear now, if she would just give EFT a try, so finally she agreed. I took her inside the house, sat her down, and made notes as I asked what is was about them that frightened her. Following a generic warm-up of 'fear of spiders', we then tapped using short cuts on the specific responses she gave.

"Scared when they move fast"

"don't like their long legs"

"very scared when my dad chased me with one when I was little"

"big ones make me jump" (this one introduced some humour as we tapped, which although a possible distraction I thought it was ok to finish on)

I then retrieved the glass with the spider, placed it on the table and asked how she felt on a scale of 0 to 10 and she reported a 3 (although I suspect it was less than this). I asked her if it was ok to remove the cover, and she said "yes, in fact I think I could touch it". She then took the glass, removed the cover and looked at it for a few seconds. She put her finger in the glass and cautiously touched the back of the spider, although she jumped a little when it tried to run away.

She then took the spider into the back garden to set it free, pausing to stroke its back (possibly to check that the fear had not returned) before going back into the house. This was a far cry from before, where it either faced certain death, or being released a very long way from the house ("so it can't come back"). Since then she has started telling the world about how EFT has fixed her fear of spiders.

Thanks for sharing this wonderful tool.

Colin Ball MSc (17 years in conventional clinical research, mostly pharmaceutical)