Emotional Techniques (EFT) & Tapping: Evidence-Based Clinical Practice to Release Physical and Emotional Pain

CPD

Handouts

Faculty

Robin Bilazarian, LCSW, DCSW, DCEP (Diplomate in Energy Psychology), and International Certified Master EFT trainer Related seminars and products

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Robin Bilazarian, LCSW, DCSW, DCEP (Diplomate in Energy Psychology), and International Certified Master EFT trainer, is a brief therapy expert, author and speaker who uses passion and humor to share a wealth of knowledge and her twenty years of experience integrating EFT into mainstream mental health treatment. She is the author of the Amazon best-seller Tapping the Mighty Mind: Simple Solutions for Stress, Conflict, and Pain. Her passion is to bring these rapid, thorough and gentle meridian and cognitive-based techniques into mainstream clinical mental health treatment.

EFT is a well-researched, comprehensive, mind-body treatment that rapidly desensitizes unwanted thoughts, emotions and connected physical reactions. EFT goes beyond supportive counseling and is actual treatment. It’s surprising how quickly turmoil dissipates; clients are usually better in one session -even if the issue is long standing.

Robin obtained her MSW degree from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of North Carolina/Chapel Hill and interned at Duke Medical Outpatient Psychiatry. Her more than thirty years of clinical practice includes employment in all levels of mental health treatment, including private practice and using EFT in a community mental health center and with medical staff. She was recruited and worked for fourteen years as an internal Employee Assistance Program counselor, bringing these highly effective, short-term techniques to medical staff and students in a regional trauma hospital. Her trainees also included police, fire fighters, first responders, educators, city workers and others. She ran numerous internal and external EFT workshops, including psychiatric rounds and community conferences. She speaks nationally and internationally on this topic and presents frequently for NASW and Rutgers University. She is a sought-after expert in working with anxiety spectrum disorders.
 

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Robin Bilazarian maintains a private practice and has an employment relationship with Cooper University Hospital. She receives royalties as a published author. Robin Bilazarian receives a speaking honorarium and recording royalties from PESI, Inc. She has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Robin Bilazarian has no relevant non-financial relationships.

Objectives

1. Evaluate the origin, research, and clinical efficacy of the Emotional Freedom Techniques and Tapping.　　
2. Integrate into practice 5 techniques to manage and release pain.　
3. Assess 2 neuroscience constructs to explain how mind-body methods influence healing and pain release.　
4. Evaluate the role of emotions in the experience of pain.
5. Construct exploratory questions to elicit the sequence of events to find the core triggers that contributed to emotional and physical pain reactions.
6. Assess the ethical concern of not working outside of your knowledge base and to obtain "permission" to use these methods.　
7. Utilize mind-body techniques to establish distance between thoughts and emotions and pain in order to reduce physical discomfort. 
8. Integrate EFT with your current methods to release stuck over-arousal and escalating patterns of physical and emotional reactivity.

Outline

The Biology and Language of Pain

• The value of pain
• Types of pain
• Acute versus chronic pain
• Neuromuscular skeletal pain
• Other types of pain

The Limbic System and Pain

• The role of the amygdala in pain
• How breakthroughs in neuroscience guide treatment

Autonomic Nervous System and pain

• Calming fight and flight (sympathetic nervous system) to quell pain
• Ways to move out of the sympathetic nervous system
• EFT/Tapping and Porges’ Polyvagal Theory

Typical Pain Treatments

• Medicine, acupuncture, physical therapy, electric stimulation

Emotional Freedom Technique and Tapping
Getting started in EFT/Tapping

• How to use this for physical and emotional pain
  • Quelling the perception of pain
  • Capturing focusing language
  • Metaphors to heal
  • Tell the Story Technique
  • Movie Technique
  • Erasing Limited Beliefs
  • Personal Peace Procedure
  • Chasing the pain

Pain Release Steps – 5 Non-medication Techniques
Simple, self-applied EFT/Tapping for pain

1. One acupoint
2. Rebalance energy reversals
3. The entire EFT/Tapping sequence with pain reduction as a byproduct/side effect
4. The Brief Energy Correction – new pain research by presenter

More Pain releases by adding language that affects the amygdala

1. Language from NLP – the Sub modalities
2. Metaphors
3. Listening to the message of pain and defusing it

Assessing and Treating the Emotional Strangleholds of Pain

• Somatization, truth or consequences, maybe it’s real
• Thought, emotion, physical reactions, & behaviour – all entwined reactions
• Past pain-related traumatic events
• Anger pain connection
• Secondary gain and overidentification as a pain client
• Empathic pain & compassion fatigue

Psychotherapy and Pain

• The Mind-Body Sweep – letting go of the physicality of stress and turmoil
• Big “T” and little “t” events and the feeling of pain
• Decreased social connection and pain
• Childhood triggers
• Pain, grief and trauma connections

Adding Gratitude and Forgiveness

• The neuroscience of a gratitude practice to release pain and increase endorphins
• Interrupt the negativity and confirmation biases
• Four “feel-good” hormones and neurotransmitters

Non-medication Pain Management

• Medical care – Pain management
• Opioid epidemic

Prevention

• Drug relapse prevention to address physical and emotional pain

Target Audience

• Counselors
• Social Workers
• Psychotherapists
• Marriage & Family Therapists
• Nurses
• Psychologists
• Addictions Counselors
• Occupational Therapists
• Case Managers
• Other Mental Health Professionals