KOSOVO ETHNIC CLEANSING
Johnson made nine trips to Kosovo between February 2000 and June 2002. His later visits were as much to train local health care providers in Thought Field Therapy as to treat additional patients. The follow-up information on approximately 75 of the people he worked with during his first visit came primarily from two physicians who participated as translators in the initial treatments and who continued to care for the individuals who received them. Their reports consistently suggested that once a memory had been cleared of its emotional charge, it remained clear. The initial treatment had proven a potent and durable healing in each case that was followed. The physicians eventually did ask Johnson to see two of the patients from his initial visit a second time, and the additional traumatic memories that had emerged for each – similar though less intense than the original memories – were also successfully treated. Reports of these outcomes came to the attention of the chief medical officer of Kosovo (the equivalent of the U.S. Surgeon General), Dr. Skkelzen Syla, who investigated them and subsequently stated in a letter of appreciation on January 21, 2001: Many well-funded relief organizations have treated the post traumatic stress here in Kosova. Some of our people had limited improvement but Kosova had no major change or real hope until. . . we referred our most difficult trauma patients to [Dr. Johnson and his team]. The success from TFT was 100% for every patient, and they are still smiling until this day [and, indeed, in the follow-ups, each was free of relapse]. Johnson kept a very simple but ultimately provocative set of statistics during his visits to Kosovo and other areas of ethnic cleansing, warfare, and natural disasters: • Number of people treated • Number of people treated successfully (hyperarousal to traumatic memories neutralized) • Number of traumatic incidents identified • Number of incidents where complete relief was reported Table 1 shows his tally to date: Such figures invite skepticism. Therapy simply isn’t known to produce near-100% results with any group, no less with people who have been severely traumatized. I interviewed several therapists who worked on these teams, including Johnson, who holds diplomate status with the American Board of Professional Psychology. Johnson freely acknowledges that these figures raise even his own skepticism. In his words, the findings “feel embarrassingly too-good-to-be-true.” While affirming that they do indeed reflect his experiences and that he “recorded them exactly according to what happened,” he wonders if the results could somehow have been inflated through translation of the language and the cultural concepts. In any case, he notes, “well-controlled research is essential before results like these can be accepted.” He also emphasizes that healing a trauma with energy therapies, as reflected in the above numbers, is not the end of a person’s healing journey. “Often,” however, “it is a new beginning,” providing people an opportunity to rebuild their lives without the oppressive emotional weight of their traumatization. To this end, I noticed from our interviews that Johnson meticulously integrates the energy psychology treatment into the context of the local culture’s values, social structure, family relationships, and healing traditions to support continued healing and follow-up. Johnson’s reports were corroborated by Kosovo’s chief medical officer (a highly regarded psychiatrist) and by the therapists I interviewed who worked with Johnson in Kosovo and in Africa, and they are also consistent with what others are describing. Clinicians from a wide range of backgrounds are reporting that energy psychology treatments can rapidly and permanently clear much of the emotional overwhelm associated with traumatic memories.
HURRICANE DISASTER
Two salient questions raised by the disappointing outcomes following the widespread use of debriefing are 1) is a single-session intervention (individual or group) contraindicated in working with trauma victims, and 2) should, in fact, any psychological intervention be utilized soon after a trauma, and if so, how soon? Sophia Cayer, a practitioner of EFT (“Emotional Freedom Techniques,” another widely used energy psychology approach), addressed the first of these questions shortly after having returned from working with hurricane victims and evacuees in Alabama following Hurricane Katrina (see cases): “The difference is that with EFT, even if it is only a single session, it doesn’t leave the person stranded. It is not a matter of just soothing them and then letting them go. They are given powerful tools they can regularly use as they move through the crisis and beyond.” One of the strengths of EFT is indeed the ease with which it can be learned and self-applied. Several hundred personal accounts of its successful self-application and peer-application with a wide range of psychological issues can be found at www.emofree.com.
Another single-session format where energy techniques for self-soothing can apparently be efficiently taught is in group settings. Participants are able to experience immediate relief without having to reveal to other group members the nature of their difficulties. In one variation, the practitioner works with a volunteer in front of the group. At the same time, the group is instructed to self-apply some of the procedures being used with the volunteer, focusing on the volunteer’s psychological distress rather than on their own. A reduction in the emotional intensity of issues audience members had previously identified is subsequently reported by a large proportion of the group (Rowe, 2005). The mechanisms for such outcomes are still unknown, yet practitioners are consistently reporting this finding. Rosanna Ellis, an EFT practitioner who used this method to successfully help all 30 people in a church in Selma, Alabama, lower their self-assessed distress levels (see case report) a month after Hurricane Katrina, notes that after a natural disaster such as a hurricane, “seeing other people quickly calm themselves gives hope.”
DISASTER RELIEF ORGANISATIONS USING ENERGY PSYCHOLOGY
Green Cross is a humanitarian relief organization founded in response to the Oklahoma City bombings in 1995. In conjunction with the Association of Traumatic Stress Specialists and the Academy of Traumatology, Green Cross trains and certifies trauma response specialists and deploys them to disaster areas worldwide. Energy psychology methods are increasingly being utilized by Green Cross trauma specialists. Some of its counselors also have specialized training in areas such as terrorism response, compassion fatigue, working with traumatized families, or organizing first-responder peer counseling. Green Cross provides information, education, consultation, training, and treatment for traumatized individuals or communities that have been affected by natural or human-caused disaster. Besides deploying trauma response teams to provide direct services, the organization also trains trauma response personnel in local settings. In Sri Lanka, for instance, more than 100 people were trained to be “Field Traumatologists” following the December, 2004, tsunami. For further information, visit Green Cross at
