The Use of Antidepressants with EFT Therapy
A Brief History & Current Usage of Antidepressants
During the 1950’s the first introduction of antidepressant drugs, monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MOAIs), were introduced into clinical practice.
Since that time, not only has the pharmaceutical makeup of them evolved into new forms, including selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) which are the most commonly prescribed antidepressants, but they have also become one of the most commonly prescribed drugs in the United States.
According to an article by the American Psychological Association, major depressive disorder (MDD) is the most common mood disorder in the United States with a lifetime prevalence of 14.4%. Of those who have suffered from MDD, 10.3% experienced recurring depressive episodes, while 4.1% experienced a single lifetime episode.
As reported by Gallup in 2023, “the percentage of U.S. adults who report having been diagnosed with depression at some point in their lifetime has reached 29.0%, nearly 10 percentage points higher than in 2015. The percentage of Americans who currently had or were being treated for depression also increased, to 17.8%, up nearly seven points over the same period.
In 2020, Statista reported on the percentage of U.S. patients taking antidepressants. Their data was based on de-identified pharmacy claims in 2019 of more than 3.4 million individuals, excluding those on government-sponsored benefits, who filled at least one prescription for management of depression, anxiety, or insomnia.
Of the combined percentage of women and men over the age of 20 in that study, 54.5% of women and 26.9% of men had filled a prescription for antidepressants in the U.S, during 2019.
Understandably, this may be an important consideration for those engaging in energy work with EFT.
However, what is more important may well be a new eye-opening study attesting that there is no empirical evidence for the serotonin theory of depression.
Bombshell Study Disputes Cause of Depression
In a June 2022 study, “The serotonin theory of depression: a systematic umbrella review of the evidence,” from the University College London, published in Molecular Psychiatry, researchers concluded that their in-depth “review of the major strands of research on serotonin shows there is no convincing evidence that depression is associated with, or caused by, lower serotonin concentrations or activity.”
In a letter to the editor entitled (Difficult lives explain depression better than broken brains) the research team also provided a near-scathing rebuttal to four correspondents disputing the review stating that it is “more likely that depression is the result not of a faulty brain but rather a normal brain responding to stress or adversity: in other words, a behavioral state best understood at the level of the mind (that is, the thoughts, feelings and actions of human beings in their social context) and not of the brain.”
Over decades people have been led to believe that depression is caused by chemical abnormalities, such as serotonin, in the brain and the researchers indicated that “this belief shapes how people understand their moods, leading to a pessimistic outlook on the outcome of depression and negative expectancies about the possibility of self-regulation of mood.”
In retrospect, the findings may explain why using EFT for some forms of depression often proved to be quite challenging, while other forms responded more readily.
Treating Depression with EFT
Since the birth of Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) in the mid 1990’s, it has become recognized an “evidence-based” practice for anxiety, depression, phobias, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with over 100 studies, published in peer-reviewed journals that demonstrate its effectiveness.
With nearly 50 years working as a clinical psychologist, Dr. Carrington shared, below, some heart-felt insights and seasoned advice regarding her use of EFT for clients with depression that you might find helpful.
By 2012, about 90% of my clients used EFT tapping during a portion of practically every one of their therapy sessions. During those years, I gave much thought to my experiences of using it with depressed clients. Over time, I noticed there was a pattern of reactions to EFT in the clients who had been depressed.
Reactive Depressions
By far the most EFT-responsive depressions I worked with were Reactive Depressions. The reactive depressions are those which are precipitated by a specific event or series of events in a person’s life, and which usually occur in a person who wasn’t depressed prior to the event — they were exactly what the name implies — reactions to something. The “something” is usually a loss or the threat of one, such as:
- A loss of a person
- A loss of a career
- A loss of money
- A loss of security
- A loss of a limb
- A threat of a dangerous illness
- A loss of one’s youth or,
- Even a loss of one’s future hopes.
Essentially, the precipitating event triggers a form of mourning for the lost object or person, or life circumstance and the result is a feeling of sadness and hopelessness.
In my experience, this is the kind of depression that lent itself remarkably well to EFT treatment. It is eminently tap-able because it has identifiable boundaries, it’s not vague or generalized, and there are plenty of specifics to tap on.
True, some people may not initially be consciously able to identify just what their painful loss or separation was, although I found that most clients with this problem did know what the event was and could tell me about it with little prompting.
For others, it wasn’t until I delved a bit into their life to learn when it all started, what may have occurred around the time the event happened, or what disturbing thing they may have been anticipating at that time, that the cause of their deep inner sadness could be unearthed.
Such people were unable to explain the precipitating cause at first, particularly if it was an “anniversary” of some unpleasant or painful event that brought on the depression. Anniversaries are scrupulously observed by the mini calculators in our brains even if we don’t consciously “remember” them, and they can be big troublemakers.
Another reason a person may not identify the event right away is that, in their mind, they may be downplaying the real impact of the thing that is bothering them — maybe a former spouse remarried three months ago when the depression started and they didn’t think it bothered them at the time (but it did!), or maybe their youngest child went off to college leaving a vacant house and it all seemed fine to them (but it wasn’t!), etc.
I found that these precipitating events seemed to come to the surface and identify themselves naturally and often very quickly as we tapped on their feelings of sadness, or emptiness, or discouragement, or self-blame — or whatever was coming up for them. It’s as though the real reason wanted “out,” that it was just waiting to be seen and dealt with.
Of course, once it is out in the open then we could go to town with EFT by tapping for the SPECIFIC issues and those issues could often be handled remarkably quickly and with them went the depression. Voila!!
This isn’t always that simple though, as you may know. Beneath the loss that started the depression may lie a series of other losses and separations that are hidden in the dim recesses of the past, such as a very early and extremely painful loss that occurred in infancy before the child even had words to put to it.
If these are reactivated by the more recent loss, then they are the driving forces behind the depression and we have the familiar network of, often multiple, aspects to trace through tapping.
Sometimes, I had to help a client do this laboriously and it takes great patience, but the payoff can be tremendous. Then again, sometimes, it went much faster than I had expected.
More often than not there were some core issues to be addressed and the depression that brought the client to my office was the obvious problem, the “SOS flag” so to speak, that motivated that person to come for help.
Once the help (therapy) was there, then the deeper meaning of it all could be addressed. I often found that this process was even more important than clearing away the depression symptoms themselves — as a result, a person’s whole life was being turned around, a new perspective was being born, light was flooding an existence that might formerly have been dull or lifeless — warmth was there in place of coldness and numbness. That, of course, is the real meaning of what we do.
I could give a whole bunch of examples of how EFT had acted as a life saver to people I treated that had all but given up in their lives and resigned themselves to a less than-alive existence — which is what depression is. But others in my niche have reported so well about the joy of helping another lift their depression that I won’t expound with more such wonderfully inspiring stories.
Endogenous Depressions
Now, however, I’d like to say something about the other depressions that we encounter, the so-called “endogenous” ones which are thought to somehow be inwardly caused, because we don’t know what really causes them.
These are the depressions that often have their roots in the deepest layers of a personality because they are so ingrained, having originated very early in the person’s life. Usually, the roots are dim and vague.
These depressions have a heaviness about them that often makes trying to deal with them through EFT, or by any other means, a test of endurance for the therapist who, time and time again, may bring the person to a place of lightness and feel the weight lift from them.
Sometimes, after they had tapped their way through a whole series of aspects to what seems to be a wonderful result, person returns to their next appointment almost as though they had been collapsed and their gains seemed to have been swept away.
It was like watching a child build a sandcastle by the sea — so much painstaking work and attention goes into those turrets and the moats and the towers and the little stick drawbridges; the castle seems to be really getting there! — then the waves crash onto the beach and swish it all away, and all that’s left is mush and a few wet mounds of sand.
When this happened with a client, I kept trying. I really worked with them. I used EFT with all my encouragement and ingenuity, and I used every other technique I thought might help. I felt hopeful then discouraged in turn.
Often, I had to tap on myself after they left the office to keep my spirits up and to ensure my support of them. But when it happened over, and over, and over again, I finally got the message. What we were building was being undermined as fast as we created it!
The client may have been trying, as I was, to beat the game but it was like trying to hold back an avalanche, a force that was so huge we couldn’t get ahead of it; it was pulling them back down each time and what we were constructing so carefully simply didn’t hold.
The Allergen Connection
Some of my associates emphasized that allergens, energy toxicity, and the like, could be very important contributors to an otherwise “un-budge-able” state of depression. There have been notable cases where the mere removal of certain items from the diet made major inroads into, if not completely cleared, a person’s depression.
In cases where the depression kept “coming back,” I suspected that its true cause was a new irritant to the person’s system and the “coming back” may have been the newest reaction to that irritating substance.
It was at that point, after exhausting all avenues, I would suggest a referral to full allergy and sensitivity testing and treatment by a trained energy allergy-therapist, or to obtain temporary assistance from a specialist for psychiatric medication, such as anti-depressants, that could be used ALONG WITH the allergy therapy and the EFT.
Saying this may sound like heresy to those who use the amazing alternative and complementary therapies that we know work so well, and which I used in all cases WHERE THEY WORKED.
However, there seems to be an important function that psychotropic medications for depressions filled, at least at this point in history, something nothing else can quite do in certain cases. Prozac and Zoloft and Paxil, or even on occasion their more forbidding relatives such as the MAOI inhibitors, Lithium and the like, are powerful drugs and like anything of power they can be dangerously misused and carry serious side effects.
BUT — and this is an important “but” — they can also, on occasion, make it possible to continue to treat and ultimately “save” a person whom we might otherwise have to give up on.
A Case for Antidepressants
An example is my client “Maria,” who was a gifted teacher. She worked with me for three years to overcome deep-seated personality problems, including a strong tendency to depression and frequent helpless crying spells.
These stemmed, at least in part, from an early childhood separation from and partial rejection by a mentally ill, frequently hospitalized mother who, at least had been able to give her daughter some love when she was an infant, but little afterwards.
Maria was highly intelligent and strongly motivated to overcome her feelings of irrational helplessness and threat and was truly rewarding to work with.
However, we discovered early on in her treatment that although she would often make excellent progress dealing with core issues that were central to her life with the help of EFT, which she used skillfully (at home, too), we were still unable to quell the tide of the depression. The despair and fear were just too much for her and they would completely undermine our work.
Antidepressants Enabled EFT Progress
Eventually, it became necessary for her to have the assistance of anti-depressant medication that she could use while we were tapping on her problems in therapy, with the aim of phasing out the medicine as soon as she could build up her inner strength.
Through the use of Prozac (yes — that “terrible” word!) on a regular basis, Maria and I were able to do transformational work together. With the help of EFT, she was able to explore the deepest issues, some of them so early in origin as to be wordless, and to one by one resolve them.
And, with the support of the medication — which didn’t, in itself, solve her problems, but did enable her to work on them diligently in therapy — she rebuilt a “self,” restructured her relationships to people and the world, and became able to drastically reduce the medication, periodically, to stop taking it altogether. Last I knew, she moved forward and was doing remarkably well in an exciting new phase of treatment.
Most importantly, without the help of the drug we couldn’t have done it. And, similarly, if she used the drug alone, without the remarkable, therapeutic help of EFT, she would not have healed — at best the drug would have kept her in a holding pattern. She could probably have functioned and continued with her teaching and family without collapsing by taking it, but her real life, her real “self,” would never have emerged.
So, this was not an “all or nothing” thing, not a matter of drugs or EFT, as if these two things are opposed to each other, rather it was what I suppose could be called “medication-assisted EFT,” the two modalities working in concert with each other.
Mixed Results on Weaning
Additionally, in the majority of cases where it was necessary to use anti-depressive medication along with therapy and EFT, the clients involved had usually voluntarily sought to wean themselves off the drug at the first opportunity. Most people don’t want to stay dependent on a certain medication if they can possibly help it.
Sometimes, people have even gone off the drug too soon, and unmanageable emotions surfaced, which even persistent use of EFT and therapy was not able to handle rapidly enough. They then had to return to taking the medication, usually at a reduced dosage, until such time as they had worked through other issues that had been waiting in the wings.
In those cases, however, I found that even the first effort at leaving the medication, while it may not have always succeeded, was usually a very positive indication when it occurred.
Almost always, those who tried it, even if they at first had to resume taking the medication, did eventually, with persistence and further work, manage to finally get off it successfully. The need for it was gone because the underlying damage had been repaired, the deeper wounds had been healed and the cause, not just the symptoms, had been removed.
Admittedly, I experienced an occasional client with depression who had continued to progress in their therapy by using EFT in a creative fashion but who, nevertheless, was unable to do without their medication, no matter how hard they tried to stop it. When this happened, I didn’t look upon it as a failure.
If God chose to heal that person by several means at once, who was I to quibble? If what I saw in the therapy was an inner strengthening of the person, a deepening of a sense of peace and happiness in their lives, then “so be it.” We went on from there.
Unfortunately, certain people may have to stay on psychiatric medication for the rest of their lives, just the way some diabetics have to stay on insulin in order to live. These drugs can save lives when they are truly necessary, if, that is, they are sensitively and expertly prescribed — it’s simply where we are in history.
Maybe someday such medications will be obsolete, things of the past, but at present, there are some problems we haven’t yet solved, and some mysteries remain unexplained.
Nonetheless, whatever the case, I found that the best thing I could do for my clients was to recognize the facts and “deeply and completely” accept those people just as they are. That, alone, may be one of the best healings of all.
EFT Master, Dr. Patricia Carrington
