BWRT stand for Brain Working Recursive Therapy. First discovered in 2011 by world famous psychotherapist Terence Watts, it was taught for the first time in October 2013. I am often skeptical of new therapies that seem to be ‘the next best thing’ but because I knew this had been developed by Terence Watts, whom I have a lot of respect for, I have kept an eye on it’s developments over the years.
I feel privileged to have had my original Hypnotherapy and Psychotherapy training by Terence 22 years ago and I know that his knowledge and understanding of the mind is untouched by any other therapist that I have ever met in the therapy world. Still, it is very new as far therapeutic interventions were concerned so I held back until a couple of years ago.
Being governed by the Association For Professional Hypnotherapy and Psychotherapy, we are required to undertake a number of continued Professional Development hours every year. It was during the 2020 covid outbreak and lockdown, where we were unable to see clients face to face for many months, that I decided, because I had heard so many positive stories regarding BWRT, to enrol myself on the BWRT course. I haven’t looked back since.
So what Is BWRT? BrainWorking Recursive Therapy® is a neuroscience-based process that has been shown to be useful to help reduce or alleviate the symptoms, and causes of symptoms, associated with Anxiety, Phobias, PTSD, Depression, Low confidence, Low self-esteem, and many other psychological issues. It works in a unique way to ‘defuse’ the psychological triggers of the symptom pattern before they reach the part of the brain that activates the emotional responses. In this way the symptom is either alleviated or greatly reduced in severity. BWRT® mimics the way the brain and psyche acquire the difficulty in the first place and is therefore a totally natural process. The work does not require you to divulge any intimate details of your personal life or of any event that you wish to keep private that might have been the cause of your symptom. While there is not a therapy in the world that works for everybody every time, BWRT® is considered by many to be among the most reliable of psychological methodologies.
Since introducing BWRT to my practice I have seen a bigger success rate than even hypnotherapy. Clients need less sessions and the change seems to be permanent.
A recent client had contacted me for BWRT for claustrophobia and was unable to sit in a dentist chair or even have her eye lashes put in because she just couldn’t bare the thought of feeling trapped. After one session she returned the next week, over the moon, because she had visited her dentist and had a tooth removed! After her second session she returned, with a big smile on her face, batting her new eye lashes. “Look!” She said “an hour and a half I layed there for these to be done”. She reported she didn’t have any overwhelming anxiety and we both agreed that would be her last session.
Another recent client contacted me for BWRT for anger. He reported that ever since he could remember he felt a constant underlying agitation and had severe anger outbursts. After one session the agitation had subsided and after three the outbursts had stopped. He was so happy to be free and able to live and enjoy his best life. These are just a couple of recent clients. I have successfully used BWRT for Addiction and used BWRT for phobias and BWRT for anxiety. The list goes on. BWRT is truly life changing.
Having worked with EFT for many years now I often find that many clients, when first introduced to the process, tend to be wary that it is an ‘out there hippy therapy’. That’s why I have decided to write this piece on EFT or ‘tapping’ with some evidence based scientific research to support my practice.
One of the things I love about EFT, as a therapy, is that it empowers clients, enabling them to take their power back and no longer having that belief of being a helpless victim who believes they have no power to change. It can transform beliefs, emotions and lives. EFT gives my clients the ability to relearn about themselves, through tapping, and this rewires circuits in the brain. This helps them to change their ways by no longer making unconscious choices programmed by past traumas. This can open them up to new jobs, relationships, opportunities, clearing subconscious cravings and self-destructive habits. The possibilities are endless!
EFT, which has its roots in eastern philosophies, such as acupuncture, and has been shown to have profound positive effects to the nervous system, also to the production of stress hormones (particularly cortisol), DNA regulation and brain activation. Research, which began in the 90s, shows that conditions that respond well to EFT include phobias, anxiety, depression and PTSD. EFT has also been referred to as ‘Psychological acupuncture’ and has been shown to be very effective on the symptoms of PTSD, which it is suggested that 8 out of 100 people will suffer with in their lives, and, sadly, we all know, a much higher rate in military personnel.
Research also shows that EFT is an effective treatment for anxiety and depression. WHO (World Health Organisation) has said that between 1990 and 2013 the number of people suffering from depression and/or anxiety increased by nearly 50 percent!
The acupuncture points tapped on have been shown to have a powerful impact on the way the brain responds to stress and the way it processes information. This can then be used to change distressing or negative feelings and self-limiting thoughts and behaviours by instilling a more positive emotional state, beliefs and goals.
When I was first introduced to EFT, it was hard, at first, to get my head around tapping on negatives. This was because, my core training had been in Psychotherapy and Hypnotherapy, where we very much work with positive suggestion. This process of tapping on the negative now makes much more sense, however, because by tapping on this first, we are stating the truth about what is happening and we are actually engaging the amygdala (the stress centre of the brain) and the limbic system (our emotions) in the brain and body. We engage the negative feeling or sensations just long enough to feel them then we hit the delete button through tapping. It’s the tapping that calms the physiological response from the body. Once this is released, cognitive shifts (or re-frames) may surface naturally. If we tap with only a positive affirmation at first it may result in only a small shift. We need to tap on the problem and reduce its intensity before tapping on anything positive.
EFT has also shown to affect the hippocampus (memory centre) and this, along with the amygdala, plays a role in the decision process when you decide something is a threat. It has also been shown to lower cortisol levels. Too much cortisol can result in lowering immune function and ultimately affect physical health (eg: fatigue illnesses). Tapping sends a signal to the limbic, or emotion, system in the body and reduces its arousal. This is why people tend to feel calmer after tapping, to the point some people will often start yawning. Tapping reduces activity in the amygdala and studies show that changes last over time so there may be changes in the neural pathways. This brain and body calming allows for clearer thoughts and better decision making.
Talking therapies alone are often not enough for healing damage caused by abuse and catastrophe. The physiological changes to the body and brain following trauma become encoded ‘viscera’ and require treatments that engage safety systems of the brain before trying to promote new ways of thinking. Basically, effective therapies for severe trauma must address the body as well as the mind.
A decade long research program at Harvard Medical School looked at what happens in the body when various acupoints are stimulated and results found that certain points almost instantly decrease the activation of the stress response in the brain.
Past president of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, and professor of psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine, Dr.Bessel Van der Kolk has been vocal of his criticism of the tenets of traditional Psychotherapy. He didn’t believe that just making meaning of a traumatic experience was usually not enough to process it. People needed to have experiences that directly contradicted the traumatic state of emotional helplessness. This is EXACTLY what EFT does! EFT seeks to desensitise clients without requiring them to fully engage in the verbal reliving of the traumatic experience. The results are remarkable. He reported that EFT produced benefits that insight-orientated therapies do not. He also found that Cortisol, which is released through stress, was shown to quickly respond to EFT.
In one study, 83 adults were randomly assigned to either a single hour of EFT (they didn’t get to choose the treatment option), a psychotherapy group receiving a supportive interview, or a no treatment group who just rested. All adults had their cortisol tested (measured in their saliva) immediately before and 30 minutes after the intervention. The EFT grouped showed clinical and statistically significant improvements in anxiety (approximately 58%) and depression (49%). They also reported an overall reduction in the severity of symptoms (by 50%).
There were no supported changes in cortisol levels between the other two groups. The cortisol in the EFT group dropped by 24% which was significant. The speed in which EFT works can be truly breath taking. This tells us that the mind and body are definitely in tune and interconnected. Further studies to support my practice, also shows that 30 minutes tapping on ‘claustrophobia’ brought elevated brain wave levels down and significantly reduced anxiety scores.
EFT has also been shown to have a positive impact on our genes. In a study of 16 war veterans with PTSD who received 10 hour long EFT sessions, found that interleukins, which are responsible for regulating our bodies inflammation response, changed significantly. Expression and ‘good’ genes associated with improved functioning of the immune system were also changed. There was also a significant association between improvement in the veterans mental health symptoms and positive changes in the expression of their genes related to stress hormones.
EFT research has also been conducted on heart rate variability and heart coherence, the circulatory system using resting pulse rate and blood pressure, the endocrine system using cortisol, and the immune system using salivery imunoglobin. This is an extensive measurement of the central nervous system (CNS). The CNS controls most functions of the body and mind and consists of the brain and spinal cord. The study looked at change in the psychological symptoms of anxiety, depression, PTSD, pain, cravings and happiness.
Thirty one participants attending a five day workshop practiced 12 hours of EFT. Measurements were taken at the start and end of the workshop. Reported reductions were in these areas:
Anxiety: Reduction 39%
Depression: Reduction 46%
PTSD: Reduction 32%
Pain: Reduction 66%
Food cravings: Reduction 80%
They also reported their happiness increased by 13% and their immune system by 61%. Resting heart by 8% stress hormone and cortisol levels by 49% and their systolic blood pressure by 6% and diastolic blood pressure by 11%. Sixty days later when researchers followed up with the attendees, everyone indicated they had maintained the gains in their psychological symptom improvements.
Many research trials have now compared EFT to traditional and gold standard approaches. Invariably EFT treatments achieve or identical outcomes in fewer sessions. A unique feature of EFT is that the benefits appear to last way into the future without further treatment.
Early findings from a world-first study aimed at scientifically proving a simple ‘tapping’ technique have shown the method is effective in reducing food cravings. This is the first time anywhere in the world that Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging scans (fMRI) have been used to see physical, scientific evidence of exactly how EFT self-help techniques work on these conditions by changing the brain’s neural pathways involved in addiction and food cravings. After 4 weeks (2 hours per week) of EFT Tapping, participants’ brain scans showed a remarkable reduction in activation. The control group who did not receive any EFT did not change.
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging scans (fMRI)
Tapping on past traumatic memories also changes neural pathways. At no point is it suggested that tapping changes or erases any learnings. Nor does it transform what actually happened. (Although I could argue that EFT Matrix reimprinting does. See my blog on how it transformed my tourettes symptoms here). But the deactivating signal it sends to the emotional centres of the brain allows someone to remember what happened without distress. And the research is indicating these changes last over time.
{ The Science Behind Tapping by Dr.Peta Stapleton }
The wonderful aspect of this particular therapy is that not only has it been very successful within my therapy consulting room, it is also administered successfully through video link, as I have witnessed powerful and positive change with clients, in this way, throughout Europe. Particularly with covid-19 I am now able to offer my services worldwide. For further information please contact me here.
For eighteen years now I have been working with clients, mostly on a one to one basis, and the majority of this work has been trauma work using hypno-analysis. Many of the clients that enter my consulting room have a pre conceived idea about hypnotherapy or hypnosis. I tend to call this the ‘magic wand’ syndrome. That’s to say that they think that I can hypnotise them and take away their worries or fears and everything will just go away in one session like ‘waving a magic wand.’ It would be truly wonderful if therapy was that simple. It tends to be stage hypnosis that gives people this misconception. The clue is in the title ‘stage’ I am afraid. Hypnotherapy is a completely different ball game. I use clinical hypnosis alongside Psychotherapy. So let me explain further, when we suffer trauma the emotions related to that trauma can get repressed and this repression happens within the subconscious part of our mind.
Hypno-analysis is a form of therapy that can allow us to access moments that have caused trauma and this helps release the trauma from our subconscious. There are also other therapeutic tools which I use, apart from hypno-analysis, which can help to do this. I believe in having different tools to support what works for each personality type, and am aware that what may not work for one just might work for anothe. What I have found is that what all the most successful tools have in common is that they involve revisiting and working with the event that has caused the trauma in the first place!
So, when that client walks into my consulting room expecting me to wave that magic wand the last thing that they usually want to hear is that I am possibly going to take them back to face up to the trauma that caused their symptom. I say ‘possibly’ because this isn’t always the case. Suggestion therapy will work on some things, for example quit smoking. I do know though, for most problems related to a neurosis, the cream of therapies is weeding out that root cause through analysis.
The fact that a client doesn’t want to face up to that trauma is the exact reason that they should even though this is quite understandable. Have you ever heard the phrase ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’? We don’t want to ‘go there’, of course we don’t , because it means reliving the moment. Most of our problems end up going back to something in childhood and that was a time when we couldn’t understand or rationalise how we were feeling hence repression. Revisiting that event and accessing the feeling is a way of reprocessing it and letting it go. Sometimes there needs to be some re-framing of that memory. Other therapeutic interventions such as EFT and EFTMR can also help with this and they are similar to hypnotherapy in that we are putting the clients mind into the theta state. This relaxed state makes us able to access the subconscious and it is also much easier for the client to talk about traumatic experiences and for me to work with them.
It’s not just a case of jumping into a memory and working with it straightaway. It would very often take much more than one session to be able to access traumatic memories, of which there would usually be more than one, and the right therapist would guide you very gently through the experience. Yes, emotion will be released but that release is a huge weight off the shoulders leading you towards freedom from your symptoms. I, myself was healed of my tourettes symptoms by revisiting an early traumatic moment that caused them. You can see my article about how this was achieved here.
These are great interventions to help with the relief of anxiety, depression, PTSD, phobias and so much more. So if you ever find yourself in front of a therapist who you were hoping was going to wave a magic wand but instead wants to help you confront and release those trauma then my advice would be FEEL THE FEAR AND DO IT ANYWAY! Remember, always go with a professional accredited registered therapist to help you achieve that freedom from fear and anxiety and know you are working hand in hand with the clinical professional. To book a free 30 minute consultation contact me here.
You are worthy of success. You may have heard the old cliché ‘if you do what you have always done then you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.’ I can’t disagree with that. In order to get different results, you need to do different things, or, in some cases, just do things differently. Much of that notion starts with the way you see yourself or your own belief system. Because the majority of our own behaviour is unconscious, if you are not seeing yourself as successful in whatever it is that you want to achieve, then you probably won’t be as you will not be taking the appropriate action to push yourself in that direction. Because of this, if you try to consciously just change, then you’ll eventually end up going back to your old ways of thinking and feeling which will then push you back to your old habits and you will just end up with the same results. Most of your change needs to be subconscious.
If you are tired of it being a struggle to do the things it takes to get what you want, then despair no more because therapy using subconscious modalities such as hypnosis and Emotional Freedom Technique can be of enormous benefit. Whether it’s exercising, eating healthy, progressing your career or increasing your bank balance if it doesn’t feel comfortable or fit in with who you are then it will always seem like a chore. That’s if it even gets achieved at all. You can never out-perform your self-image so it could be time to start seeing yourself exactly as you want to be if you want to achieve success in a particular area.
If the gap between what you have and what you desire feels uncomfortable then you need to remove blocks to help you move forward to achieve what you truly desire.
To have what you truly want you need to do certain things and to do those certain things you need to see yourself as being a certain type of person. Using Hypnotherapy and EFT/Tapping a therapist can guide you to make profound positive changes in your life. If there is any doubt that you are worthy of the life that you desire then I can help you eliminate the blocks to seeing yourself as truly magnificent! With these blocks removed you will see yourself as naturally deserving of success and taking the necessary action to make this happen will seem like something you really want to do rather than something that you just have to do.
You are so much more than what you have become. Your circumstances have been identified by how you are seeing yourself. Once any negative blocks are removed then you will be so much more comfortable taking the action to achieve having what you want. To give you an idea about what EFT/Tapping is see my video here. No, I can’t change you but I can give you the tools and guidance to help you change yourself. Nothing is too good for you. You may just not be aware of the greatness inside of you. To book an appointment contact me here.
Is it time to start favouring your mind over your body? While there is a huge emphasis to looking after our body I wonder why there is still a stigma attached to looking after our mental health and having any kind of mind therapy. Why would you choose to favour your body over your mind when, in fact, it is actually your mind that is the control centre to your whole body. If we have a problem mentally, then it has a detrimental effect on your body. Anyone who knows anything about Emotional Freedom Technique knows that when we have Emotional problems, more often than not that will affect you physically. If we can identify an emotional or psychological problem then tapping into that can also help relieve physical problems. Different feelings and thoughts are linked to specific parts of your body. Understanding your body’s language of symptoms can increase your potential for healing. The mind and body connection is explained in great detail in the book “Your body speaks your mind” by Deb Shapiro.
Bearing this in mind it is suprising that so many people still favour looking after their body before their mind. The health industry is worth a fortune with people spending millions on health products and vitamins, health foods, plastic surgery, exercise, lip fillers, permanent make up, make up, diet products etc….. yet people are still more reluctant to spend their money on therapy and looking after that ‘control room’ that controls their body. Your mental health is actually the most important part of you that should be nourished. You can spend money on drink and drugs that may mask your symptoms but there is nothing like getting to the root cause of your symptoms and using psychological interventions to weed them out. Don’t get me wrong looking after your body definitely also has a positive effect on your mind. There is a great psychological boost after you have had a good gym session. Exercising releases all the feel good hormones into your body which make you feel so much more positive. What we need to do though is start giving some favouritism to our minds. Years ago when us humans started giving much more attention to personal hygiene then there was a rise in life expectancy! It is a fact that if we have a more healthy mental state then that will also have a positive effect on our life expectancy. Depression and negativity Is a killer!
Society is much to blame for this attitude to looking after our minds. You may confide in someone that you feel depressed and get the reply “shake it off, its all in your head”, when in fact depression is an illness that needs working with. Can you imagine telling someone you have broken your leg and them saying “Oh just just shake it off, its all in your leg!” The problem is mental health problems cannot be physically seen yet have a huge detrimental affect upon us, often much more so than many physical symptoms. Its time to close the gap between our physical and mental health and make them more equal. We need to start paying more attention to our thoughts and feelings. We cannot repair a psychological wound if we don’t realise that we are wounded.
In the 17 years I have been working as a mind therapist I would be extremely rich if I had a penny for every time a client has said “I can’t afford therapy every week” yet would then go on to tell me they need the money for something else like a trip to Butlins for an 80s weekend drinking copious amounts of alcohol! Although its great to have breaks and some good times if we have a psychological problem then we could just be using this as escapism or masking the problem with drink and drugs. We would be far better off addressing our issues first then we could enjoy the good times so much more and not need to put so much stress on our bodies with negative toxins. We can heal ourselves by tackling negative thinking. If we start tackling emotional hygiene then can you imagine what a better place the world would be? You can start doing this just by changing a few simple habits like addressing negative thoughts. When you start getting a negative thought then make a conscious effort to focus on something positive. The more you practice this the more it will become a habit instead of the negative habit. Hypnotherapy will also help with subconscious positive suggestion for deep rooted problems.
Of we have to look after our bodies too, but remember it all starts with the mind!
