
When Trauma Is Overwhelming

Founder, National Institute for Integrative Healthcare
When Trauma Is Overwhelming
Dawson Church, PhD
Full Transcript
Introduction to PTSD healing research 0:00
I am so delighted to welcome you to this little tiny Mini Talk. I'm going to give you a sliver of information about how PTSD can be remediated. The research showing that PTSD can be treated and healed in the vast majority of cases. Now, I'll show you these research studies on the US National Library of Medicine and show you how you can take advantage of these findings as yourself. I am also so delighted that these new tools are available because going back 15, 20, 25 years, we didn't have them widely available and now they are.
So there are solutions, there are remedies, there are therapies that are able to relieve the suffering and burdens of PTSD. And I'll share that primary research with you today. The first stop we'll make on our virtual tour is the research page at EFT universe. Many of the guests in the summit are talking about EFT tapping tapping on acupressure points. The way this works is when you think of a negative memory, a negative experience, and you tap Apply acupressure to these points, it calms down the emotional brain.
EFT research resources and study overview 1:36
It's almost miraculous to work with people who've been traumatized and see that just in a few moments. Even serious traumatic memories lose their emotional impact. You can find out all about this research by going to the web page Research.eftuniverse.com. The research pages are also searchable and they're organized by issue. So if your issue or the issue of the person you're referring to the research pages anxiety, click there. Go here to find depression here for pain and physical symptoms and so on.
You'll see the list of studies over here. Phobias, PTSD, serious illnesses. There are a lot of studies of people with serious illnesses, weight loss, cravings, and addictions. A great deal of research on how you have to is able to successfully treat those. So back to PTSD. And again, make sure you bookmark that research.eftuniverse.com page so you can find the research there. And learn how effective EFT is for your condition. This was a huge study I did with colleagues. Right now, I'm on the U.S.
government's National Library of Medicine, and we're looking at some of the research I've done. So here you see here on PubMed. My name is Dawson Church. And here are the names of all my colleagues, Bryce universities and Institutes. And the contribution they made to this large scale randomized controlled trial. Those are the gold standard in research. And we gathered veterans from different parts of the US and we treated them with EFT. We found that it took only six one hour sessions. And after that, 90% of them were free of e.f, for PTSD symptoms like flashbacks, nightmares, and intrusive thoughts I had out of ten veterans were free.
those symptoms after six one hour sessions of the EFT. In this study, we looked at the reductions in pain, depression and anxiety among those veterans. So once those PTSD symptoms disappear, what happens to their physical pain, their high levels of depression, high levels of anxiety.
Veteran PTSD trial results 4:18
And we found that they dropped dramatically. The pain went down by 41%. And there was a significant drop in anxiety and depression. We then looked at what happens when you do EFT. Tapping in groups. This is called borrowing benefits. Borrowing benefits because you're sitting in a group, because we're all in person groups, you're watching other people tap. You're tapping yourself. You're the group leader is tapping. And what happens there? We found that all of the same things happened that physical pain went down, addictive cravings went down.
The depth and breadth of symptoms like anxiety and depression dropped dramatically. And also PTSD symptoms dropped a lot as well. So here you can see that EFT in groups is also effective. We then apply those lessons to groups of veterans. And in these research in these retreats, they were weeklong retreats done in New Mexico with groups of veterans and their spouses. And eventually we work with 218 people in this major study. And we found, well, first of all, one finding was unsurprising, which was that most of the veterans coming into the retreats had high levels.
PTSD. But one thing it was really shocking to me was that high levels of their spouses had PTSD. And if you look at some of the numbers here, you will see that the treatment was very successful, that their symptoms dropped dramatically in both the male veterans and their spouses. But 29% of spouses, over quarter of the spouses had PTSD as well. Clinical levels, which means a high level, a diagnosable level of PTSD. Living with a traumatized person traumatizes the people around them. But the good news is that after that one week intervention and follow up,
Group tapping and spouse outcomes 6:36
only 4% of the spouses were still in that clinical range had a dramatic effect, not just on the veterans, but on their spouses as well. And I would I would encourage you, whether it's PTSD, whether at Second Society, whether it's depression, whatever it is that is bothering you, take a workshop, go to EFT universe, go to our workshop page and find a workshop that appeals to you. There are experiential workshops that are very brief two, three, four hours a day long. There are professional skills training workshops.
You don't see a professional at all to take these the 4 or 5 days long and you go and you tap with other people, you bar benefits and you see your symptoms shifting. So you go to EFT Universe and you can get clinical EFT training there at various places like live, Crip Hollow Institute. If you're a mental health or medical professional, if you're a doctor, you get American Medical Association credit. If you're a psychologist or a psychotherapist or a social or social worker, you get American Psychological Association credit.
These are accredited classes by the top medical and psychology girls, girls in the world. They're that good. that that effective. The real science. And so you'll find a lot of these workshops I teach some, certified trainers teach other ones in Europe, in Australia, other parts of the world. And again, some of them are live in person, like Omega Institute in upstate New York. Others are virtual. Some are very brief, and others are 4 or 5 days, like this one over here. Yep. And cravings. That's just one day.
And you're training there with Mirjam Paninski, director of conscious Programs. And you'll literally feel the shifts happening in your body when you do that. If you also want to see what other people have experienced, we have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people saying this changed my life. These well-deserved, these well-designed trainings with expert EFT instructors are as good as it gets.
Training, certification, and workshops 8:54
There's a lot of EFT out there in the world. There's a lot of tapping out there in the world. There's only one place to get clinically EFT, the evidence based forum of EFT. And that's at EFTuniverse.com. It's so fantastic. I want to tap the world. I want to share these amazing tools. And everyone. The training was excellent. EFT is open so many doors and allow me to do things I had not done in years. Let's go back now. Take a look at more, the research, especially the PTSD research. This is a meta analysis.
This is where scientists assemble a whole group of studies and derive the lessons from all of them. Again, you'll find this on the US National Library of Medicine. And there are several meta analyzes there of EFT server PTSD. It found that it was extremely effective, and when compared with other evidence based methods, it was as effective in some cases much more effective than other kinds of therapies. This is a study I did with my dear friend Garrett Yount from California Pacific Medical Center, and people from other universities, and we found that EFT has EPI genetic effects.
Epigenetics is the study of the effects on the gene DNA from outside the cell, outside the body. And we found that tapping that six sessions of tapping actually this in this particular study was ten weeks of tapping produced epi genetic effects. It was literally dialing up their gene expression. And the genes that were affected were those that are responsible for inflammation in the body. These were inflammation control genes that were upregulated and immunity genes that were dialed up as well. So it's literally affecting your cells down to the level of the genome.
And in other study we did later on showed it was also affecting your RNA and these little markers called micro RNAs in your cells. This is a. Treatment guideline we did at the request of Kaiser Permanente. Kaiser Permanente is the largest health maintenance organization in the US, has about 20 million people under its care. And this was published in the Permanente Journal. And they asked us to evaluate all the research and say what was really effective at treating veterans as a second practice guideline for treating non veterans as well.
And we recommended ten one hour sessions.
Meta-analysis and epigenetic findings 11:54
And again this is effective for 90% of people with PTSD. All of this is clinically fit. Again here you'll see my name Dawson Church. I've been the primary investigator in many studies. And you want to make sure when you're getting tapping you're getting it from a certified clinical EFT practitioner. Sometimes we get calls or emails in the office saying, hey, you know, I went to a practitioner and got a PhD. It didn't work. And we'll look up that practitioner and it'll turn out they aren't certified.
They are trained, they don't know clinically EFT. They've just watched a few YouTube videos on tapping and said I can do this. I feel great. I hang on a shingle. As a practitioner, you want somebody who is trained and certified in those American Medical Association, American Psychological Association accredited classes that are only taught at EFT, Universe Clinical EFT. This is at one of the top journals of the world Frontiers in Psychology, and you can go ahead and read that for just how much evidence there is, showing that clinical EFT is effective.
There are 56 randomized controlled trials examined in this review paper. And, if you also look at the, copy of this paper on frontiers, the original place it's published, you'll see, it's been viewed just in the first couple of years, 42,000 times downloaded almost 10,000 times. This is one of the most downloaded papers in the history of psychology. It's that important to paper. And it shows you can heal depression, anxiety, and PTSD. One of the other cool things is that, again, we're back at the National Library of Medicine here, and we're looking at a journal called Evidence Based Integrative Medicine over here.
One of the cool things is that have T because it's epigenetic. When you tap and you feel better, that feel better translates to all kinds of good things going on in your body. And this study showed that EFT improves multiple physiological markers of health. We found that people not only improved for PTSD, pain, and cravings, but they also improved for happiness. They also had a big drop in cortisol. The cortisol dropped 37% from the beginning to the end of the study, which was about five days. Their immunoglobulin burns, their immune markers rose 113%.
There were more than twice as immune, to flu, to pathogens, to toxins,
Clinical guidelines and health markers 14:54
to Covid as they were at the end of that week, their resting heart rate went up 8%. That is a huge drop in just a week. Their blood pressure went down 6%, their diastolic blood pressure went down 8%. So all of these markers of general health improved. What? Improve your blood pressure. Want to raise humidity? Tap. doesn't been medication or will need to to go to your doctor. I go to my doctor, I take medication. But the first thing I always do is approach the level of emotion and energy. We can also take classes, online classes, virtual classes.
In EFT there are classes and weight loss. Here is a skinny jeans program. We have an immune boost, seven day immune boost program. We have a ten day anxiety relief program. Many of these classes are only, a few tens of dollars, $28, $49 insomnia, $29. Again, this is evidence based science. So over here there are relationship programs, stress programs, mindfulness programs, trauma, a trauma program, be trauma free. Those episodes of that program are only 2 or 3 minutes each, but they already get you into a wonderful space.
And then this is based on my book, The Genie in Your Jeans, a full fledged 12 week program. Now, one of the cool things is that this study shows that if you work with people who are not diagnosable with PTSD, but are almost there. So this study was done on veterans who are at risk for PTSD, had elevated levels of all of those symptoms. They didn't yet have PTSD. This is what happened to them. We saw a dramatic drop in their symptoms 64% drop in their symptoms after a PTSD is untreated, it goes on and becomes full fledged PTSD if you nip it in the bud, if you catch it early, like we did with these veterans, 64% reduction in symptoms, they dropped way, way, way down, making it much less likely they will develop PTSD in the future.
This is how we apply all of this research to real people. We started the Veterans Stress Solution in 2007, and we've now treated more than 20,000 veterans free of charge with EFT, eco meditation, and other evidence based techniques. So here we are, having our volunteers work with people who are suffering, who are in the, the, the throes of those symptoms,
Early intervention and veteran support programs 18:00
and they are able to find relief. If you know a veteran or a veteran family member who is suffering, send them this link stresssolution.org. It will help them and get them rapid access to a provider. They can literally make an appointment in under a minute and be tapping with somebody within a few days. We've also had volunteer teams that have been to disaster zones, the school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut and Uvalde and Parkland, Florida. We've had teams of volunteers there to help with the aftermath of trauma care, and this particular volunteer team went to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake there.
I recommend you just type in Haiti on EFT Universe. Watch this brief video. It will make you cry as these beautiful young kids learn to tap and recover. One of them, her name is Emily and you'll see her story there in about a minute. And after the earthquake, she had been trapped in the rubble for a couple of days with her mother, who died. So there she is, trapped in the rubble for a couple of days with her dead mother. Emily was so traumatized she had not spoken a word since she was pulled from the rubble.
And you see her in this little six minute movie, French and English. You see her and she, after not speaking for the previous couple of years, being so traumatized. That happens to people with PTSD sometimes their language said it was get shut down and she eventually starts to talk. By the end of the little mini movie, she's running around playing with the other kids, so it's remarkable to see the stories of how people, even we worked with genocide victims. We worked with people who have been trapped in natural disasters.
This is science based. It really works. So to get started yourself, go to the website or the EFT seminar. Just theeftseminar.com. It's absolutely free. It's a full fledged course with me learning. Some of the basic principles are the EFT. Go work with the practitioner.
Disaster relief stories and getting started 20:30
Just go to the resources section of our website. Find a practitioner. Type in your location here. Although most of them work virtually, but if you have a special thing you ought to work on, if you want to work on anxiety or depression, go ahead and type it in here. Find somebody and have a highly qualified, clinically EFT practitioner as part of your support team. And finally, go to the website Dawsongift.com. There you can download the EFT mini manual and also get a copy a bonus of EcoMeditation.
So I hope this is inspired you with a knowledge that there's real science showing that you, can heal. Why do I love so much in the face of tragedy is because I know that healing is possible. If healing weren't possible, if we were still stuck in the place we were 15, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago where you just suffered, that would be tragic. But now we have these evidence based techniques like EFT, and they are able to shift people rapidly and radically. And one of the I worked at Fort Hood in San Antonio, Texas, the biggest military base in the US, tapping with groups of veterans there with PTSD.
And what are the the the wives was walking through the facility for the first time and said, I'm looking for the door where you keep all the or the old versions of these people. My husband walked out of the door a new person. I have a new husband. Is this back again after Vietnam where the old one go? They got to be hidden here in your back office somewhere. Back in the broom closet. Back in the dungeon. I got my husband back again. And we hear so many stories of people like that who just get their lives back, get their loved ones back.
I want you to know that your problem is not beyond solution. You deserve, wonderful life. I'm so glad you're here. And I know that's possible for you. And as you are giving yourself that resource, you can shift, heal that change in your body and claim the happy life that you deserve. Thank you.
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