He’s History, You’re Not

I’ve started doing this rather strange type of therapy which is supposed to help me feel less depressed. It’s called EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique). What you do is sit across from the therapist who instructs you to touch different areas on your body and repeat “even though I feel a sense of loss about my divorce (or whatever) I completely love and accept myself.” The body points are weird. You put two fingers in the middle of your forehead, you rub your solar plexus, put a finger under your nose and at the side of your eyebrow and a couple of other places. I felt like Alice in Wonderland taking instructions from the white rabbit.

I have no idea what to make of this. I want to believe it will help but it just seems too goddamned ridiculous and contrived. The therapist swears it works but then she’s very invested in it and wants it to work. She’s not exactly neutral. She also did muscle testing where you ask a question and see if someone’s arm stays up or is pushed down. That’s how she decided on which technique to use. The problem is that she is doing the pushing and how does she know she’s not pushing harder for one answer or another-i.e. the one she wants you to give. You’d have to have a machine doing it for it to be really accurate.

When the EFT was over she kept asking me how I felt and I really felt pressured to say I felt better, but I didn’t I think if I was a suggestible person I probably would feel better but I’m such a skeptic I’m virtually immune to the placebo effect. Well I’ll try it a few more times but I don’t have a lot of faith in it.