My Story
I am so happy that you have found your way to my website.
My mission is to have as many humans as possible helping themselves and others by practicing EFT/Tapping.
“What I wanted was a better way to help people, that felt safer and gentler than talk therapy and more effective. EFT delivered on all accounts. ”
In the family I grew up in, helping others is what we do.
Every person in my family has worked either in a helping profession or as a teacher.
And for me, it’s now both. I teach others how to help people with EFT.
I am proud to be from a long line of strong women who have spent much of their lives helping others. My mum was a Marriage Counsellor who then worked in the disability sector. And even my grandmother worked as a Social Welfare Officer, which was pretty bold back then.
So, I guess it was an obvious career choice for me to become a Social Worker.
I graduated from the University of Melbourne School of Social Work at age 21. I worked as a Social Worker for most of my life in between having my three children—who are now all in their twenties.
Prior to learning EFT / Tapping, I worked mostly with women and children, in child and adolescent mental health, and then with couples and families. In various public health settings, then in private practice and eventually I worked in the field of sexual trauma.
For the most part I found being a Social Worker and a Therapist to be interesting and rewarding. Although a part of me often felt like something was missing.
When I had my own private practice as a Counsellor, I used to wonder if maybe I wasn’t really doing the work properly? Because the things I had been trained in sometimes just did not feel like they were making much difference. I asked myself if listening, acknowledging, and validating feelings was enough to really help people move forward.
Sometimes it seemed very beneficial as a first step, but other times it felt like not enough at all. Why were people not seeming to get better?
I learned Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, but I wasn’t a fan of it in practice. I felt like I was almost insulting people by saying to them “you just need to think differently, and then you will feel better”. From what I observed, the people I worked with often could not think differently. No matter how hard they tried, or what I tried. It was obvious that they felt “stuck” and just talking about it and trying to think differently was not working.
I learned about EFT/Tapping when I was working in a Sexual Assault Service, and it came along just in time, as I was on the verge of burnout myself.
I loved working with the clients in many ways, but I was exhausted form the constant stress of the workload, and hearing trauma stories all day every day was starting to take a toll. Working with the broken systems, legal, medical, child protection and the mental health systems added extra burden to an already difficult job.
I often felt hopeless when it came to working with individuals who had experienced sexual trauma. Because in that setting, not only did traditional talk therapy not seem helpful for many people, for some people, talking about their trauma seemed to make them actually feel worse. Some people were so anxious about “talking about it” that they would miss their first few appointments. Or not come back after one appointment.
Many of them really wanted to do whatever it took to get better, but they couldn’t talk about the trauma, even if they wanted to. It seemed physiologically impossible for them.
I learned later that this was because trauma affects the part of the brain responsible for speech (Broca’s area) and when the system is in overwhelm, the body can just shut down and prevent a person from being able to speak.
So, talking about the trauma and even the current emotions surrounding it is very challenging for many.
Nobody taught me anything about this when I did the specialist training to be a Sexual Assault Counsellor.
I felt so underprepared for this role, but I didn’t want to say so, as again I thought that maybe it was me. Maybe I just didn’t get the bits they taught me which would really help me to help my clients. It made me feel helpless and hopeless, and was taking me on the path to burnout.
I didn’t really understand what was going on at the time. It sounds bizarre but I would say now that I didn’t know much about trauma back then. I knew I was struggling with this job myself, but I didn’t know what else I could do. I was in no shape to start a different career, and I didn’t even want to.
What I wanted was a better way to help people, that felt safer and gentler than talk therapy and more effective. EFT delivered on all accounts.
When I started doing EFT with my clients at the Sexual Assault Service, people started recovering from their trauma.
They were as amazed as I was.
Often after decades of trying many different things, big emotions were fading: guilt, shame, self-blame, hopelessness, worthlessness, anxiety and anger; we could tap on them and reduce them all.
Even when I didn’t really know what I was doing with EFT, it still worked.
It was a huge relief for my clients, and it completely reinvigorated me as a helping professional.
EFT made it faster to help people recover from their trauma and to move out of their stuck feelings, so they could persist through the sessions if they were difficult, because they could feel that the EFT was working. Like no other modality they had ever tried.
Instead of dreading going to work, I was now excited to see my clients and hear who was feeling better today and what changes they were noticing.
I started screening for PTSD, Anxiety and Depression so I had a baseline and could then measure the progress in a validated way. My clients and I were often astounded at how symptoms were reducing and disappearing. Everything from flashbacks, nightmares, hyper-vigilance, to sleep problems, substance use and nail biting.
You name it, EFT was helping.
Because EFT helped my clients so well, I became fascinated with it—okay, obsessed is probably a more accurate word. You can imagine that if you have been trying to help people for most of your life, and then suddenly you can do it much quicker and easier, EFT is going to be attractive for you and for your clients.
EFT is a total game changer. As much for the practitioner as it is for the clients.
I used EFT a lot to help myself recover from burnout. I found great mentors and swap partners, and eventually I tapped my way out of that stressful job in Sexual Assault, into my own private EFT practice. Where I became the boss of me and I could work with my clients the way I wanted; with no bureaucracy or boring meetings to get in the way and annoy me.
If I can do this, you can too.
It will take time, and lots of practice, and it is absolutely a journey of self-discovery. But most people find that learning EFT is one of the best things they have ever done, because it’s practical, natural (no drugs), safe, gentle, effective, and empowering. And we can use it to help ourselves whilst helping our clients change their lives too.