It’s been some years since I put together the website www.tappingforcash.com. It was a fun site, mostly, and a wry look at a therapeutic process that I consider to largely consist of total nonsense.
However, the complaints continue to arrive in a slow but steady trickle. I care not, probably because I am exactly that which call me. My two favourites that I showed Laura, “You seem to think you are Jesus” and “You seem to think everyone else is an idiot except for yourself” to which my ever loving wife replied, “Well, they are both right about that, it’s like they know you.”
I did experiment with tapping a few years ago, the results were underwhelming and I quickly got over my initial interest in tapping as a therapeutic tool. What stood out and grabbed my interest were the huge claims made for tapping by its advocates, its simplicity and the fact that a few respected friends swore by it. A few still do.
But then people used to fervently burn “witches” at the stake, believe that the world was flat, the sun revolved around the earth, mercury was the grand cure-all and many other strange things that turned out to be total bollocks.
I’ll be clear about my stance here. Tapping as a therapeutic tool is total bollocks, but it seems to be an exceptionally popular bollocks. I just know that I’ll get more emails from fervent tappers telling how my scepticism needs addressing; how I have limiting beliefs, and how dare I deny the powerful set of evidence that proves tapping is effective. How dare I?
I’ll say it again. It is all bollocks – and you are probably deluded if you think otherwise.
In the tappers dream future, the following situations would arise…
Patient: “Doctor, please help me, I am so terribly depressed, I want to die.”
Doctor: “Fear not, young man, do this, tap your face and repeat after me… ‘Even though I am terribly depressed I deeply and completely accept myself.’…”
Patient: “Doctor, I have this lump, I fear it might be cancer…”
Doctor: “Fear not, young woman, please tap your face and repeat after me…..”
Nurse: “Doctor, a patient has just arrived with the most frightful psychotic symptoms!”
Doctor: “Now, young nurse, do not panic, please break out the manual and look up which meridian we must get him to tap on his face…”
It’s all total hogwash, hokum, bollocks. The client taps their face, the therapist taps their wallet. It’s a good deal…for the therapist.
On YouTube I’ve seen such crap as “tapping for the troops” – some young idiot without any combat experience, military training, medical training or pretty much anything other than training as a “pick up artist” and a bit of face tapping teaching people how to “tap for the troops” and cure them of their combat experience. I say let’s send these morons to Baghdad, where they can best employ their services. They won’t suffer from the heat, the danger, the prejudice or the fear, of course, they can simply tap that away and endure anything.
YouTube is awash with such hokum for using tapping to overcome hunger pangs and obesity, anorexia, depression, anger and even fear of the Illuminati. All the videos posted by enthusiastic tappers all showing you how to tap your face in order to cure pretty much anything and everything.
Repeat after me. Even though this is total bullshit, I deeply and completely accept myself.
Whilst this might be bad enough for some, there is far, far worse. I hope that maybe someday those people will look back and find it all a little embarrassing, remembering the era of the mad tappers where the solution to all the world’s problems lay in getting people to tap their faces. In the 60’s LSD had similar advocates and to those advocating it looked like the solution to the world’s problems – if only everyone tried it, they thought, then maybe everyone would be open minded and wars will end.
So get on the phones everyone, call Al Qaeda, call North Korea and Jeremy Kyle, spread the word and get the bloody fools to tap their faces before it is too late. Spread the word, spread salvation, they banned LSD, maybe they will ban tapping too. The powers-that-be fear its power, and tremble in the face of the liberation and freeing of imprisoned minds.
The solution is so simple, why can’t these people understand and open their minds just wide enough to see?
The zeal of the Christians never went away; the missionaries took up their positions with the natives to spread the seed of their religious fervour. Soon the natives were converted and the great Word spread unhindered. The natives converted to the correct version of reality, their souls were saved and the Truth set them free.
And anyone who disagrees be damned; freedom works a bit like that.
And whilst there may not be so many Christian missionaries these days, but as I say, the zeal continues – God simply got replaced by therapy. Priests and pastors become counsellors and therapists, and the word to be spread became not the words of the Christ, but rather the immortal mantra, “Even though I am blah blah, I deeply and completely accept myself.”
And so the charities began and the overseas rescue missions planned. To Africa they said, and to Africa they went, armed with their mantras and tapping fingers and taught the Africans how to cure malaria.
“Tapping can relieve the suffering of malaria” they claimed, and to a desperate population, remote and impoverished, these well fed and well-intentioned “therapists” and “healers” taught them the new gospel and creed. It was the creed of “energy medicine”, of great medicinal claims and of a mysterious force that man can learn to manipulate to bring about relief from suffering and death.
Here’s a quote from some purveyors of this astonishing cure:
“If the study supports our previous anecdotal evidence that TFT is beneficial in relieving symptoms and effects of malaria, the ATFT Foundation will need to proceed with the second stage of the project, which is to determine the most effective methods for disseminating and teaching the appropriate TFT techniques and protocols to vulnerable populations.
“Recently, the missionaries in Tanzania invited the ATFT Foundation to send a team of TFT teachers and researchers to explore the uses of TFT to reduce physical and emotional suffering associated with the deadly disease of malaria, and to set up a study to determine the effects of TFT on that population. Local personnel will continue the study once the team has left. It is anticipated that two to three follow-up visits by Foundation members will be required for supervision, further training, and monitoring purposes.”
I don’t doubt the sincerity of the people involved, any more than I doubt the sincerity of the people who collected the firewood following the witch trials in the 16th century, and as Bateson suggested, if you are going to send a message of deception, you better get an honest man to carry it.
I’ve seen a recent shift in the claims made by tappers from the ability to “cure” malaria, to “relieving the suffering caused by malaria” but they take not medicines, quinine based drugs or intravenous fluids. No, they take pseudoscience and proper sounding algorithms; they offer false hope and come home with impressive mission statements and of course the all-important feel-good factor and photos of having helped the less fortunate and ever grateful Africans.
Mind you, it could be worse. The Mexicans got “Tappy Bears”, but I’ll rant about that later in the week.