How Can EFT Tapping Help Manage OCD?

Whether OCD is a minor nuisance in your life or significantly disrupts day-to-day functioning, the available therapies are no longer limited to medication and talk therapy. Learn about the success rates and limitations of current treatments, as well as an innovative approach that yields results beyond mere self-control.

For 1% -3% of the people, OCD has a devastating impact on their life

Donald Trump says he finds hand shaking barbaric and washes his hands as many times as possible, leading to the question 'Does Trump have OCD?'. David Beckham reveals his OCD story involving hours of obsessive cleaning and organising his home, leaving the world to wonder why he doesn’t hire a cleaner.

Despite its portrayal in popular culture as a minor personality quirk, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a serious condition affecting 1% -3% of the population.

OCD Stories - Understanding the Real Impact

The stories that only therapists get to hear about OCD come from individuals who are housebound because they get caught up in compulsive hand washing and can only finish if a family member provides reassurance.

Or OCD stories from people who can’t stand the idea of coming in contact with anything that touched the floor, including supermarket bags, an item that was dropped, their own flip flops or anybody with shoes on.

And then, there are more functional OCD stories. People build their life around the compulsions and rarely seek treatment either because of the stigma of OCD or because they are doubtful of the 'talking cure'.

 In 1990, the World Health Organisation ranked OCD in the top 10 most disabling conditions in terms of diminished quality of life and lost earnings. The UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence estimated that, on average, a person with OCD loses 3 years’ worth of income over their lifetime.

On average, a person with OCD loses 3 years’ worth of income over their lifetime

Current OCD Therapies

Until the 1960s, obsessive-compulsive disorder was considered incurable, as both psychotherapy and medication had failed to significantly reduce OCD symptoms. The first real breakthrough came in 1966 with the introduction of exposure and ritual prevention (ERP), which involves exposing the OCD person to the very situations that evoke the distress with the goal to reduce obsessional anxiety.

CBT and Exposure & Ritual Prevention (EX/RP)

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is currently the first-line treatment for OCD, combined with exposure and ritual prevention.

CBT is a type of talk therapy used to treat a range of mental health conditions. The aim is to help individuals with OCD question their irrational beliefs and develop more functioning ways to respond to obsessions and compulsions.

EX/RP is a challenging treatment where individuals with OCD are introduced to the objects or situations that trigger them, until they learn to cope with their anxiety. The goal is to help them confront their fears and learn to tolerate anxiety without the need for compulsive behaviours.

EX/RP therapy exposes OCD people to the situations that trigger them

Success Rates and Limitations of OCD Therapies

CBT with EX/PR has proven to be efficient in reducing OCD symptoms in 50% to 70% of the cases, particularly when done intensely, meaning daily over a period of time. (Source: PubMedCentral)

While EX/PR has strong support for its efficacy in reducing the severity of compulsive behaviours, 20% of participants drop out due to the harshness of the treatment, leaving a large number of OCD people calling for more gentle treatment options.

EFT Tapping for OCD – The Trauma-Informed Approach

While CBT and EX/RP focus on improving the individual’s thinking and coping mechanisms, tapping therapy addresses the root of the problem.  It assumes there is a deep-seated anxiety underlying the obsessive-compulsive behaviours and aims there. Once the core anxiety behind OCD reduces through tapping, the OCD behaviours fade way without the need for self-control.

In reality, eft tapping therapy treats an OCD person the same way it treats a war veteran, as if there is deep trauma underneath it all. The type of anxieties that underpin OCD are typically picked up in childhood. Simple events that adults do not necessarily consider traumatic can have a significant impact on impressionable young children. That's why they are so hard to identify with normal talk therapy

Tapping therapy treats an OCD person the same way it treats a war veteran

Attending the funeral of a beloved grandmother can make a child scared of falling ill and, therefore, a hypochondriac for the rest of their life. A doctor scolding a child for not washing their hands properly in an attempt to teach a lesson in hygiene can give a shy child a lifelong compulsion for cleaning rituals. Children who experience prolonged hospitalization or surgery at an early age can develop complex ways of dealing with overwhelming anxiety.

And the tricky part? The details of these memories are long forgotten, because, unlike being on the war front, these are considered normal parts of life.

How Eft Tapping for OCD Works in Practice

When an individual with OCD symptoms reaches out to me for tapping therapy, we start with the 'before-list', meaning we document the OCD behaviours, how often they happen and how intense they are on a 0-10 scale. This is our starting point.

Then the detective work starts. I ask several questions both about their current life and their childhood with the single aim of identifying the core anxiety that underpins it all. One of my OCD clients had the impression that he had a million OCD problems to deal with daily. He needed help with washing hands, showering, when going to public places, the list was endless.

After two sessions, it became clear that he actually had one problem underneath it all. He could not trust his judgement on anything. He needed reassurance on each and every decision. And that extended beyond OCD behaviours. It was affecting his whole life. After five sessions, we managed to get him to be able to wash his hands and shower without needing any help. Two weeks later his parents went on vacation and left him home alone for the first time in years.

The goal of eft tapping therapy for OCD is to reduce the underlying anxiety and see a consistent improvement of OCD behaviours. Clients are not asked to try hard between sessions; rather, they are asked to observe the changes in OCD behaviours that naturally occur. At every session, we evaluate progress using the 'before-list'.

What is unique about tapping therapy is that it brings up memories that are long forgotten because it works beyond just the analytical part of the brain.

And it does so in a gentle way. That’s why it is possible to identify traumatic events underpinning OCD.

Although there is extensive clinical research on the impressive results of tapping therapy (see here), no research has focused on eft tapping therapy for OCD. Instead, you can read about the experience of an OCD client who worked with below. You can find more client reviews on Doctify.

Interested in finding out more about how eft tapping can deliver such results? Go to Emotional Freedom Therapy explained by a tapping therapist.