From Abracadabra to Zombies

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reader comments: Emotional Freedom Techniques

24 Oct 2008
I do think we need healthy skeptics in this world. It is just a shame that it is now a case of proving you are right rather than being happy. You will always find what you are looking for.

reply: ?? I'm not sure I follow you. We need healthy skeptics or we need to have a healthy skepticism?

Are you saying that we must choose between being right or being happy? Why?

Maybe you always find what you're looking for, but I don't. I also don't see what these three points have to do with each other.

I have used EFT and NLP [neuro-linguistic programming] to help hundreds of people with many different problems. If I had read your website before starting and was easily convinced, then I would have not learnt it. The knock-on effect would be all the people I have helped would not be helped.

reply: Since you didn't read my website before you started using EFT and NLP, we don't really know what you would have done had you read it first. We can be pretty confident that the people who come to you would have some other purveyor of energy woo-woo to "help" them. But let's stick with the facts and then we'll look for a theory to back them up: you've "helped" hundreds of people with many different problems. Could you be a bit more specific?

Then we come to the question and from what I could see you explain techniques like EFT as working due to placebo. Every drug has double-blind studies to dismiss placebo. The last place I looked placebo accounted for 51% of results. If I can get 98% of results how do you explain the placebo? It even works if people don't believe it can work.

reply: If you read what I've written, then you know that energy healing works by the placebo effect, which is a term that describes several distinct components. NLP is not a form of energy healing and I don't claim that NLP works by the placebo effect.

I'm not sure what you mean be getting 98% results, but if you mean that you have a success rate of 98%, then I would like to see the data. I would like you to define what problems you are trying to help people resolve, describe precisely how you determine when the problem is resolved, and that you include in your data all clients who do not have their problem resolved, including those who don't finish the program. I'd like to see a description of the program that is administered. I'd like to see some sort of blinding process involved, so that we can eliminate as far as possible any self-deception. We really shouldn't let you decide success on the basis of your subjective impressions.

How exactly it works is under questions. My experience tells me it does. If you look through history one thing that is true is that humans are stupid and refuse to accept changes in their environment. This is why science moves on one funeral at a time.

reply: Once again, your train of thought eludes me.

I really couldn't care who believes what I do is a hoax or not. The results speak for themselves. How I get those results as long as ethically right is irrelevant. It beats the other ways that people heal through mainstream methods and certainly costs a fraction of the price.

reply: First, I wouldn't say that what you do is a hoax. You seem to believe that what you are doing is legitimate. You don't seem to be intentionally deceiving people, which is what frauds and hoaxers do. But, just because a practice is ethical doesn't mean it is without fault or that it does what it claims it does.

It would be helpful if you could be more precise about "beating" other ways of healing. Exactly how does what you do "beat other ways that people heal through mainstream methods." You say your work costs a fraction of the price? What do you charge? What kind of mainstream treatment tries to accomplish the same thing you do? What is the charge for that treatment?

If you are the sole judge of the results, you might consider reflecting on some of the problems we all have with evaluating our own experience. It's not that we're stupid, as you say, but that human nature tends to lead us to beliefs that are comfortable and self-satisfying, whether they're true or not.

Websites like this are needed for the doubting minds. As Osho said "A doubting mind is always a doubting mind". No amount of information you ever get will change that.

reply: Osho? Why bring Osho into this? Is he now teaching EFT or NLP? In any case, he's wrong. Some doubting minds are changed by evidence and argument. I think that's a good thing. On the other hand, some believing minds are not changed even when shown they're wrong. I don't think that's a good thing.

It may be that your identify relies too much on you not believing anything you can see. So infrared, dog whistles and ultraviolet cannot exist.

reply: Your non sequiturs are really starting to annoy me.

I just hope that your words do not stop people healing hundreds as I have done. And of course you are missing out on the healing yourself. Ponder that for a while.

Steve

reply: Just what is it that needs healing? My skepticism regarding energy healing? In any case, I don't think I'm missing anything or that I need any healing from you or other EFT practitioners. I pondered my loss for a second or two and decided it's not worth worrying about. All that was required was that I readjust my tinfoil cap.