Question: You mentioned on your videotape that when there are multiple Aspects to a problem, each Aspect will need to be tapped down individually. While that sounds fine in theory, if this is a complicated problem that could take a lifetime!

Answer: You’re right but fortunately though it doesn’t work that way. What happens is more like the effect of knocking a single domino down in a row of dominos. You knock one of them down, it knocks the next one down, and it the next, until the whole row has toppled and a ripple effect has started.

When we use EFT on an issue that has many aspects– let’s say prolonged childhood abuse — the first few experiences that are recalled will certainly have to be individually tapped down using the EFT protocol. However, after that, the person may suddenly find that many, many other traumatic situations which have a similarity to the ones that have already been tapped down, have lost their “charge” and are now much easier to handle. They seem to have become neutralized by association with the other traumatic memories.

Gary Craig calls this phenomenon the “forest-trees” effect and speaks about it in his work with Vietnam veterans suffering from multiple traumas incurred during wartime. He discovered that reducing ten or more such traumas by having the person work individually with EFT on each one of them often resulted in this having a beneficial effect on many other instances of wartime trauma encountered by that person. This is extremely encouraging because it means we don’t have to ferret out and treat every instance in most cases.

Dr. Patricia Carrington, EFT Master