Emotional Freedom Techniques for Anxiety

Abstract

Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) combines elements of exposure and cognitive therapies with acupressure for the treatment of psychological distress. Randomized controlled trials retrieved by literature search were assessed for quality using the criteria developed by the American Psychological Association's Division 12 Task Force on Empirically Validated Treatments. As of December 2015, 14 studies (n = 658) met inclusion criteria. Results were analyzed using an inverse variance weighted meta-analysis. The pre-post effect size for the EFT treatment group was 1.23 (95% confidence interval, 0.82-1.64; p < 0.001), whereas the effect size for combined controls was 0.41 (95% confidence interval, 0.17-0.67; p = 0.001). Emotional freedom technique treatment demonstrated a significant decrease in anxiety scores, even when accounting for the effect size of control treatment. However, there were too few data available comparing EFT to standard-of-care treatments such as cognitive behavioral therapy, and further research is needed to establish the relative efficacy of EFT to established protocols.

App-Based Delivery of Clinical Emotional Freedom Techniques: Cross-Sectional Study of App User Self-Ratings

“…The results of this study are consistent with a large body of work that has found EFT to be efficacious in the reduction of symptoms of anxiety and psychological distress [ 35 , 47 , 71 ]. In the RCT of Church et al [ 50 ], statistically significant improvements in subjective reports of anxiety (−58.34%) were found following a brief 50-min EFT session.…”

“…The psychological benefits of EFT intervention include improvements in symptoms of anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), self-esteem, and pain [ 31 , 35 - 39 ]. Other studies have reported rapid improvements for a variety of additional psychological challenges such as performance blocks, social anxiety, excessive food cravings, and stress management [ 31 , 37 , 38 , 40 - 43 ].…”

Emotion regulation through bifocal processing of fear inducing and disgust inducing stimuli

“…suppressing facial expressions in response to emotional stimulation (e.g. [ 7 , 21 , 22 ]). Two early reports by Gross and Levenson report that expressive suppression of negative emotions (i.e.…”

“…Above and beyond these studies, regulatory strategies that directly involve changes to the body (e.g. bifocal processing) remain somewhat understudied in the neuroscientific literature on emotion regulation in healthy populations [ 21 ], despite their effectiveness in clinical populations [ 22 – 30 ]. The relevance of the physiological components of emotional regulation is supported by results from studies investigating psychological disorders that are characterized by high levels of physiological arousal.…”

Emotional freedom techniques (EFT) as a practice for supporting chronic disease healthcare: a practitioners’ perspective

“…Studies and review articles investigating the efficacy of EFT treatment for a variety of psychological and physical health problems have appeared in peer-reviewed medical and psychology journals. Meta-analyses of clinical trials indicate a large treatment effect of EFT treatments for anxiety, depression, and PTSD symptoms (18,19,20). Several studies using quantitative data have also been conducted investigating the effects of EFT on physical chronic health problems such as tension headaches (11), obesity (21), traumatic brain injury (12), chronic pain (13), and psoriasis (14).…”