TFT – Callahan Techniques® Thought Field Therapy®

Joanne Callahan, President, ATFT Foundation

There are currently two TFT healing and training teams, teaching local community leaders how to help their neighbors, families and colleagues how to tap away the pain of loss, trauma, grief, despair and fear.

ATFT UK Foundation’s board members, Dr. Howard and Phyll Robson, have joined a healthcare team led by Dr. Carolle Jean-Murat, California, providing community outreach for many in La Vallee, Haiti. Howard and Phyll are treating many and more importantly, are teaching a group of 32 leaders, clergy, teachers and professionals in TFT trauma relief. They will leave behind a TFT skilled and caring group to continue helping others.

They will soon be traveling to outlying areas with their new TFT trainees to support them as they begin to help the many children and refugees from the devastated Port Au Prince area.

This model of teaching the local people to carry on with the healing tools of TFT has proven to be very successful in Uganda and Rwanda and we expect similar results in Haiti.

The ATFT (USA) Foundation’s trauma relief team, Suzanne Connolly, Caroline Sakai, Gary Quinn and Cyndi Quinn, have also just begun training a new group at the TFT algorithm level, and are scheduled to begin a diagnostic level training for those trained in previous years. They will also begin two follow-up studies to the work done in Kigali and Byumba in 2008 and 2009.

They said they were welcomed with smiling and appreciative faces, friends from their previous trips, all telling stories of how TFT has helped their community over the last year.

Rwanda has been an excellent example of how these missions can grow to serve an entire region. The IZERE Center (Reconciliation and Peace) in Byumba, Northern Rwanda has now been successfully helping the people of their region with TFT trained therapists for a full year.

Please help us carry on this much needed work. If you wish to help or contribute with further missions to Haiti or Rwanda, please click this link to the ATFT Foundation.

We have a preliminary report of the progress being made following our ATFT Trauma Relief interventions this August in Byumba, Rwanda. We are attaching the draft that we received from Brother Augustine. The report sent by Brother Augustine, summarizes the reports sent in by each of the thirty-six therapists we trained this August. The therapist’s reports had to be translated from Kinyarwanda to English by Brother Augustine, and this report, attached, contains the responses thus far translated. It is a busy season now in Rwanda and we may get a more complete summary sometime early next year.

It is good to know that the thirty- six therapist the ATFT Team trained have treated 622 people since our departure at the end of August. That is in addition to the 200 plus persons treated by the Rwandan therapists while we were there. It seems that TFT is making a big difference in the lives of the therapist’s, in the lives of those whose lives the therapists touch, and in the larger communities in which they live.

Good work ATFT members! All of you have helped in some really significant way. Thanks especially to team members, Caroline Sakai, Gordon Barrett, Carmen Carrasco, Gary and Cyndie Quinn.

Happy Holidays!

Suzanne M Connolly, LCSW
ATFT Foundation Trauma Relief Committee Chairperson. read more »

Izere Center in Nyinawimana Parish, Byumba Diocese in Rwanda

Thought Field Therapy (TFT) was the answer to a mother who sought help for her son recently.

Her boy was unable to attend school because he had intense rages, threw and destroyed things, and went into tantrums and tirades.  He was physically robust, and his petite mother appeared overwhelmed and exhausted with his supervision and care.

These rages were triggered whenever he didn’t want to do something, or didn’t like something, or when he did not get his way.

The treatment algorithms for oppositionality (psychological reversal), anger, rage and trauma were demonstrated to the child and mother.

The child was not initially cooperative, but tolerated being tapped by mother after psychological reversal was treated.  Then mother was warned that a thought field that would induce the rage might be created right then and there, to check the effectiveness of this treatment.  Mother seemed apprehensive, and she, the Rwandan therapist and ATFT team support therapist first moved out of the immediate range of his kicking and hitting.  Mother was asked to instruct the young boy to give the water bottle he was playing with to his mother, so he could do the tapping sequences.  He started going into a tantrum, and the reversal was done by the Rwandan therapist and his mother.

Much to both their surprise, the boy’s tantrum abruptly stopped, he gave the bottle to his mother as requested, and he started tapping himself.  He calmed down and tapped on all the meridian points himself.  He was not grunting, whining, yelling, kicking, throwing things, or hitting—but smiling, and wanting to repeat the treatment.

Mother worked with TFT with the same algorithm for her own frustration, and reported feeling the calming response herself and the remitting of her own intense emotions.  She made an appointment for a TFT follow-up visit for herself, and for help with parenting support at the Izere Center.

Research Update from Rwanda

We have now trained 33 amazing Rwandan therapists.

Our newly trained therapists are a remarkable group as are our translators. We have priests and teachers and directors of orphanages, directors and teachers of secondary schools, policemen, businessmen, and clinical psychologists (with their degrees but they tell us it’s hard for psychologists to find work in Rwanda.)

We enjoy them all and have the greatest respect for them.

Following the training of the therapists last week came the pretesting of the 200 clients. All showed up and were administered the MPSS and the TSI and it went very well. Quite miraculous!

Only one of the 200 could read and all therapists showed up to read the questions to them. The clients who are participating in the study are a rural and impoverished group and were appreciative of any help we might be able to give them. read more »