A Nursing
colleague referred Madison to me. She is an eleven-year-old who is being treated for leukemia. She
suffers from a paralyzing fear of needles. Madison is a bright, articulate and artistically gifted young
lady. She has a catheter in her chest that is threaded
into a big vein so that she can receive her chemotherapy.
Soon her chemo will
be finished and the catheter will be removed. This is a good thing but she will require blood tests about
every three months. Each time she goes to the hospital to have blood drawn painlessly from her catheter, she becomes
extremely anxious and upset at the mere sight of blood or even a discussion of drawing blood.
She suffers considerable anticipatory anxiety just thinking about being
stuck with a needle three or four months hence.
I visited Madison and her mother at their home. Madison’s
anxiety was clearly visible, indeed palpable, as she began to describe her angst at the very thought of being stuck with a
needle.
I briefly explained EFT in its most rudimentary form and asked
permission of both mother and child to proceed. Madison said that her SUDS was a "9.5 exactly" on a scale of 1 to
10. She refused to use a grownup Bother Statement. I realized that she was caught between childhood
and adolescence and asked for her preference. She chose to say that, “Even though I have this terrible
fear of being stuck with a needle, I am the Snord Master”, her title for an imaginary kingdom over which she serves
as the benevolent caretaker.
We completed one full round of tapping and although she laughed
and giggled at the “tapping and zapping”, she cooperated. Having completed the first round of tapping, I
asked her to describe her current level of distress.
Madison appeared confused and could only state that she did not know and yet, no amount of prodding could produce
the slightest bit of distress at the prospect of having blood drawn or being stuck with a needle.
I noticed that in the middle of the round of tapping, she sighed
and her entire body relaxed visibly; evidence that there was a considerable shift of the bother. I felt
my work here was done and that I would have to wait three or four months to see any results but EFT proved to have had
a powerful effect.
A week later,
my colleague called to say that Madison had come in to the hospital for her routine blood work. She insisted
that the blood be drawn from her arm with a needle so she could “try out this tapping stuff”.
According to my colleague, Madison closed her eyes, took several
deep breaths and then began to “tap and chant”. When she was through, the blood was drawn without
incident to the amazement of the nurses and doctors. Her mother watched in wonder. Madison did not
understand what the big deal was; after all, it was just a little needle.
The upside to EFT is that the remembered magnitude of the issue is often greatly diminished. The
downside is that EFT is, often, not given credit for helping to alleviate the bother.
Madison’s
fear of needles is now gone, in all probability, forever. Tapped and Zapped -- end of story!
