"Tapping helped me feel better about being gay"
An EFT for Erectile Dysfunction Case Study
An area of specialisation I don’t advertise much is working with men on issues surrounding sex and sexuality. I especially enjoy working with gay men on difficulties with erections and orgasm.
I decided to write up this case study to illustrate how effective EFT can be in helping people with challenges around intimacy, as most men have found EFT and me through Google and reading these blog posts, including this client “Adam.”*
“Adam” has given me permission to share his story on what EFT / Tapping has helped him with, because he wants to help others with similar problems find relief, and to encourage people to try EFT.
I recently had a zoom with Adam, about 12 months after finishing our work together, so I could follow up on what results he notices now and to hear about how the changes have lasted.
*Name and identifying details have been changed to protect privacy.
EFT stands for Emotional Freedom Techniques, and is often referred to simply as “Tapping”. EFT is an evidence based stress reduction tool which combines exposure therapy, cognitive therapy and mindfulness with tapping on acupressure points on the face and upper body.
RCTs (Randomised Control Trials) have found Clinical EFT to be effective for psychological conditions including anxiety, depression, phobias, and Post traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). As well as physiological conditions such as chronic pain, insomnia, and autoimmune conditions. EFT is also useful in assisting with professional and sports performance, cravings, addictions and weight loss issues. To learn more about the research behind EFT Tapping click on this link: Research on EFT
As a specialist in helping people recover from sexual trauma, I love that EFT is a gentle, safe and effective way to work with what the body and mind is holding onto.
EFT helps us to tune in to and listen to our own body, and to rewire the neural pathways in our brain. So we can change the way we think, feel and behave.
No other kind of therapy I have learned or tried in more than thirty years as a therapist has been able to help me or my clients in the way that EFT can.
When it comes to working on challenges related to intimacy, lots of people find EFT to be a refreshingly dynamic and fun way to approach working on such sensitive topics, compared to traditional talk therapy.
Tapping on difficult issues can even be enjoyable. As people feel the energy beginning to move around in their body, they can tell something is shifting in the session, and lightness and laughter can often come in as more capacity and space is created within the body and nervous system.
EFT offers hope to many people who feel hopeless; as they have tried so many different modalities and types of therapy, which may have assisted in some ways, with some parts of the problem. But have not ultimately gotten rid of the problem.
For those who have tried everything else, EFT can sometimes be the modality which makes a real difference. And it has the added bonus that people can learn to do Tapping at home to help themselves.
This is so empowering for people who want that tool to help themselves anywhere, anytime, for free.
One of the first things I do when I start working with a new client is to get to know them and the issue they want to work on.
How is it showing up for them, how is it affecting them and their relationship with themselves and with others? How long has the problem been going on, when did it start, what was happening then?
From this discussion in the first session, we identify a list of automatic negative thoughts, feelings and limiting beliefs which have developed over time, and the person rates them as a percentage in terms of “How true does this feel now?”.
In EFT these are called VOC statements, or “Validity of Cognition” statements.
If a person rates the statement as 90% true it means that feels really true right now, and 20% means not so much.
We might also list and rate some positive statements the person would like to feel more often, if the EFT had been really effective.
This process is a good way for me and the person to measure the changes they experience each session, across a number of areas, over time. In relation to how they feel about themselves and the issue we are focusing the EFT on.
It can also help us to identify each week where we need to focus the work.
For Adam the negative statements were:
Fear of failure to get an erection.
Was 80% at the beginning, went down to 10% after one session.
(This was one of those “One Session Wonders” that sometimes happen with EFT.)
I feel like I have failed & associated anxiety - 80-90% down to 20%
I don’t deserve to experience sexual fulfilment - 100% down to 10 - 20%
Holding back as I am not good enough for him - 90% down to 10-20%
Guilt - 95% down to zero
Shame - 95% down to 5%
Frustration - 90 down to 30-35%
Disappointment - 90% down to 5%
The positive statements Adam wanted to measure were:
I am enough sexually - was 50% went up to 80-90%
I feel relaxed about sex - went up 20% to 80-85%
I am able to ejaculate easily - 10% up to 30% - it still does not feel like it happens “easily”.
The Goal:
For Adam the goal of the EFT sessions was to “Let go, relax and allow” when having sex with his partner, as he felt this would assist him in being able to ejaculate more often and in a shorter period of time.
When we started our work Adam was only able to ejaculate about 10% of the time, and it would usually take 45 minutes. By the time we finished he was reaching orgasm around 30% of the time and it was taking 30minutes. So whilst it was still a significant problem, there was some improvement.
Because he felt a lot of internal pressure to perform sex correctly, letting go and relaxing about sex was really difficult.
This was getting Adam down, because in every other way this relationship with his partner was so good, and he knew he wanted to marry this man.
But he felt like his own self-destructive thoughts and feelings in relation to sex were ruining his ability to just enjoy what was great about sex with his partner.
Adam had 13 x 90 minute EFT sessions with me, and whilst he still has difficulty reaching orgasm, and it still takes much longer than he would like, he feels a lot less frustration, anger, embarrassment and disappointment around this.
He reports that he experienced profound changes in his feelings about himself as a sexual being, which has improved his overall quality of life. The impact of these improvements stretch way beyond his sex life.
Adam was a delight to work with as he was excited to try EFT with a practitioner and very open to the process. I am used to clients who often have a lot of anxiety about working with their body; due to experiences of sexual trauma, the body doesn’t feel like a safe space.
But I have found this is not the case so much with this client group of gay men wanting to work on sexual stuff. They don’t seem to have those same fears and barriers around accessing their bodies, (especially if there is no history of sexual abuse) which makes it easier for them to get into the work.
Adam had found EFT through the Tapping Solution app, and noticed some positive benefits from doing it himself. He had also had a lot of talk therapy already, which he found had helped him in lots of ways. So he was well primed to do this work.
And because I offer the both advanced skills in Clinical EFT with more than 30 years of experience as a therapist, he hoped this might be just what was needed.
In my experience it is this combination of modern psychology with the somatic component which makes EFT so powerful and effective.
With EFT we include the body in the therapy by:
a) asking the body where it is feeling this emotion, thought or event now, and
b) tapping on the acupressure points whilst focusing on that negative feeling.
People are often amazed at how much EFT helps them get OUT of their head, where they think all their problems lie, and IN to their bodies, where the trauma and trapped survival stress actually resides.
Our body is also where all the infinite intelligence lives, whereas the mind is limited in comparison.
Adam stated that he knew he was holding lots of stored stress in his groin area, and that it feel incredibly powerful to release these emotions through the tapping process. In a way you just can’t do with talk therapy.
He also liked the way with EFT, “we talk about it, we tap on it, you make connections and notice changes, and there is a big focus on coming back to measure how much of the emotion or physical sensation remains after each round. It really helps you to realise that wow, that feeling has actually gone.”
In the first session I ask people about what have they already tried to address the problem, and how that has worked.
With long-term chronic problems like Adam’s, there is often a lot of frustration, disappointment and hopelessness around all the things that have been tried that haven’t worked. All the money, time and effort that has been spent with little result to show for it.
They still have the problem, which is why they are paying me to help them, but it can be a barrier if they are feeling nervous and hopeless about “what if EFT doesn’t help me either!”.
This can be a good place to start some tapping, to show the person how EFT works.
I explained to Adam about my banana bread analogy; the overall problem being the whole loaf which is his difficulty with erections and orgasm, and the fear and anxiety associated with that. I asked him to cut off a piece of that loaf, and to cut that piece into four slices.
To read a blog I wrote on my Banana Bread Analogy and how I use it, click on this link: The Banana Bread Analogy
And the one piece we would work on today would be either a recent time he had felt this way, or perhaps the next time he expected to feel this way.
The One Session Wonder with lasting results:
As I had never tapped with Adam before, I asked him to think about the next time he might have sex with his partner, as it can be a “safer” choice than a recent event with a new person.
And what came up was the fear of failure about getting an erection, the SUDS was high at a 8/10 but he was regulated enough to go there.
”Even though I have this fear of failure, just thinking about the next time we will have sex, because I’m not going to be able to get an erection, I am going to fail for him and for me, and I feel this fear grasping my whole body, but I accept this is how I am feeling.”
Adam spoke about how his body and mind goes into thinking: “well you’ve never been able to do it before, so why would you be able to do it now?” and we added these words in as the intensity dropped with each round.
After a number of rounds the fear came down to zero, and he said he felt full of energy, so much energy in his chest it felt like it might burst open - in a good way.
He said “it feels like the tapping has taken taken out a lot of baggage”.
As we got more specific the fear came up again to a 5/10, as he thought “what if it still doesn’t work, and I still can’t get it up”, but it again receded and he felt like : “whatever happens happens, let’s give it a shot and see.”
He felt quite excited to see how the tapping would work, as he had felt a lot of energy shifts in his body during the tapping and he felt very calm at the end.
At our next session Adam reported that a day or two after that session he and his partner had sex, and “everything worked really well.”
He got an erection, and it was fine. And then two more times that week they had sex with him having no problems getting an erection. He was delighted with that result.
Although he was still only able to ejaculate on one out of three times, and it took ages as usual, the fear of failure to get an erection was down from 8/10 to 2/10.
This was very encouraging progress, and this change has lasted.
Failure to get an erection has not been a problem for Adam since.
But the other problem persisted:
Through the process of the next ten sessions, we tapped through many different little pieces of banana bread associated with this problem. And all the aspects: feeling anger, frustration, anxiety, embarrassment, heartbreak, disappointment, like he’s letting his partner down.
And just the confusion and frustration about not knowing: “what is wrong with me, and why can’t I fix this?”.
Adam believed that years of excessive masturbating to gay porn had caused him to have this problem where now he was unable to orgasm most of the time.
He felt this was connected to him not being worthy of the problem being resolved, as he had to live his life very unauthentically as a Mormon growing up.
Because he was told that gay people go to hell and that God would punish such acts, he blamed himself, and felt lots of guilt and shame about his past masturbation behaviour. He felt like his problem was evidence that what he was told was true, (God was punishing him) and that he was not worthy of recovery.
Adam also had a fear that if this problem was not resolved, and he was not able to orgasm more often with his partner, then his partner might leave to find sexual satisfaction elsewhere.
We worked on some aspects to do with his failed marriage to a woman in his church, and all of the negative messages he received about himself growing up, and in this marriage, knowing he was gay, but living a lie in a Mormon community.
By the ninth session, Adam reported that the statement “I feel like I have failed” only felt about 20% true. It went up again and down again, as we worked on the unworthiness he felt in the events, triggers and issues he presented each session.
Adam reported continuing to find the EFT process really helpful and insightful.
He reported feeling more worthy, more able to be vulnerable with his partner and to have the courage to speak with his partner when the difficulties arose.
By the eleventh session his shame and guilt had diminished significantly as he felt more and more like he is enough sexually. He reported “I can relax and be myself (before, during and after sex). It’s so much easier now.”
Adam acknowledged what a “people pleaser” he has been his whole life, and that he has a lot of trouble just “receiving” sexually. Partially because he is unable to orgaasm, he prefers to focus on giving to his partner, as when his partner gives to him, he can’t provide the “fireworks” (the name we came to for orgasms).
The EFT helped him to feel that it was ok for him to receive sexual pleasure from his partner, even if it didn’t result in an orgasm that it could be his turn and that was good.
What happens when you don’t reach the goal:
The lack of significant change in the ability to orgasm was a challenge for me as well as Adam. I had to tap on it with a swap partner myself, as I wanted so much for him to experience the easy orgasms he craved and deserved, and I was unaccustomed to my clients not reaching their goals.
I had to get out of my own way using EFT, as I knew that me worrying about this would contribute nothing positive to the mix. In fact it was going to make me nervous about our sessions, when normally I love my work, and I know how important it is that I’m not attached to any particular outcome.
We practitioners must always tap on our own crap!
By the end of our sessions, Adam’s main concern was how his partner might be interpreting his lack of orgasm.
He said “I make it seem like it’s not enjoyable”, not only because he can’t orgasm, but also because this problem can trigger so many negative emotions for him, which were difficult to process and conceal in the moment.
In the interview 12 months after our sessions finished, Adam reflected on how much his relationship has grown and deepened as a result of him doing this work on himself, because he no longer stuffs his feelings down, and feels able to open up to his partner about whatever is happening for them sexually:
“I can relax and enjoy sex now, I have learned to enjoy what I have - and the rest I don’t worry about.”
He said that as a couple they could work through a lot more issues together now, as he is more aware of how his own anxiety contributes to the problems in their sex life. And he no longer feels guilt or shame about that.
Adam states that whilst it’s great to feel reassured by his partner through this conversation and connection, he also noticed feeling a lot more confident in himself.
He finally believed that he IS ENOUGH, sexually and in every way, exactly as he is.
Adam identified that orgasm is no longer the “end goal” of sex with his partner, but that building and strengthening their relationship was the real goal.
And they were definitely achieving that.
A few months after finishing our work, I received some beautiful photos and videos of Adam marrying his partner. What a beautiful wedding day it was!
And when we caught up recently, Adam finished our call with telling me how much more self acceptance he noticed around being gay. “I feel completely comfortable with who I am and where I am at right now”.
He told me about an example of something happening at work where he proudly identified as being gay and married to his partner, in a large setting full lots of men he manages.
Something he said he never could have done before the tapping work:
“EFT has helped me feel better about being gay. I don’t care what other people think about me anymore, and this is a huge relief.”
I felt so much happiness in myself, knowing EFT had helped someone in such an important way.
Below are links to two other blogs I have written on EFT for sexual problems in men:
If you would like to talk about how EFT could help you or clients you work with, please be in touch via my website.