Borrowing Benefits in EFT is known to have profound effects on the receiver engaging in the process.
What is Borrowing Benefits in EFT?
Borrowing Benefits in EFT typically involves identifying an issue of your own, while you tap along with another person, as though you were that person. The benefits can occur if you are in an “in-person” group, from watching an EFT group session on video, or tapping along to an audio EFT session.
As you engage your thoughts with the other person, who is tapping through their issue, your similar issue can improve, even though the details of who you are listening to, or watching, might be described somewhat differently than the details of your issue. Through the tapping, a common denominator between the person tapping and you, as a witness, often unfolds.
While this phenomenon has been known for some time by long-time EFT practitioners, there is recent research that reveals its significance. In the study, “Borrowing Benefits: Group Treatment With Clinical Emotional Freedom Techniques Is Associated With Simultaneous Reductions in Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, Anxiety, and Depression Symptoms,” by Dawson Church, Ph.D. and Dennis House Ph. D., it was reiterated that “Borrowing Benefits” is used in many settings when individual psychotherapy may be impractical, such as in war-related refugee camps, with natural disaster survivors, after terrorist attacks, in school classrooms, with teams of athletes, in weight loss support groups, in war veteran retreats, and in hospital inpatient groups.”
How Does Borrowing Benefits Work?
First, an identification with another person takes place on a profound level when you are tapping along with another person and repeating the words used by him or her. It seems that stimulating the meridian points while observing, or listening to, the person tapping, and going through sequences, makes the process more powerful than a usual identification with or empathy toward another person. What is happening?
One possibility is that our emotional “receptors” are opened up by the tapping in such a way that we experience a “oneness” with the other person that is unusually strong. We seem to come into sync with that person in a profound way as our energy systems become entrained (a term that refers to synchronization of otherwise distinct processes) –– into harmony with the other. This implies the ability of the human energy system to sense and vibrate in a synchronous manner with the energy systems of the person sharing their experiences, while tapping. The energy resonates much like how tones produced on one tuning fork can cause a sympathetic vibration in another tuning fork nearby, producing the same musical note in the other fork. (This actually even holds true in plant communications) – all life is energy…
In Borrowing Benefits, as the observer shares an energy field with the other person who is tapping on their own issue, this seems to multiply the effects of tapping in somewhat the same way that a whole audience’s applause has a different effect on us from just hearing a single person clapping. Simultaneity is powerful.
In addition, Gary Craig, (found of the basic EFT process) pointed out (in a personal email communication to me) that he considered empathy to be a major contributor to the Borrowing Benefits process. “Whenever we do a BB session, we are inevitably collapsing for the person on stage things like guilt, grief, fear, anxiety, trauma, anger and the like. Everyone has collected these things throughout their lives and thus audience members draw their own parallels. For example, they may not have had anger at an abusive father (like the person on stage) but they certainly have had anger over other things (bosses, romantic partners, etc.). Anger is anger and, for BB purposes, it doesn’t matter where it comes from. Our systems will draw the necessary empathetic parallel.“
Another important point, is that when we Borrow Benefits, we allow the person who is actually saying the words and doing the tapping to take responsibility for these actions. Therefore, we are, in a sense, not responsible for them, we are only followers. Consequently, when we are absorbed in the problems of another person and identifying on an energetic level with them, our level of defensiveness against insights or change, in ourselves, as we might be, ordinarily. In a sense, Borrowing Benefits seems to “sneak” past our psychological barriers, so that the technique reaches directly to the core of ourselves to enable healing.
Similar to the benefits of listening to people in a group therapy scenario, being exposed to helping insights and ideas, while listening in on other people’s EFT tapping sessions, enables you to know and understand that we all share, and can heal from our universal experiences of problems and fears.
How Borrowing Benefits Works Through Other Avenues
Did you know that the concept of Borrowing Benefits can extend beyond the scope of adult self-help to working with children? I remember the deep effects I experienced, and the many testimonies from others who used a therapeutic tapping toy, called Tappy Bear; now out of production, but his spirit is still very much alive.
Borrowing Benefits with Tappy Bear worked so well that it was often possible, when working with children, through that tapping toy, to obtain results that would not be possible if a child was instructed to tap on his or her own self to resolve stress. The Borrowing Benefits effects were profound.
In summary, there is a lot of emotional energetic connections occurring when you strive to Borrow Benefits; much more than you may realize, at first glance. To understand this process, you will need to reach beyond your ordinary way of viewing things and “tap into” the laws of the universe to be open to sharing in the energy fields of others, who may very well be more similar to you than you know – an awe-inspiring thought.
Dr. Patricia Carrington, Ph.D.
