Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) is a relatively new Alternative Medicine emotional therapy, developed in the mid 1990s. It is not at all like the practice of psychiatry, psychology, psychoanalysis, or any kind of conventional talk therapy. EFT has been described as acupuncture for the emotions, except that needles are not used – only the tapping of fingertips applied to specific acupuncture points to affect a change in the way a person feels about a previously stressful memory or situation. As such, EFT is best categorized in the new field of energy psychology. There is much current interest in EFT because of it growing reputation as a fast, simple and rather successful therapy that often succeeds with emotional problems that are non-responsive to years of traditional treatment.

For this reason, more scientific scrutiny is being cast on EFT, especially concerning its effectiveness. In this early phase of medical research, two very important projects have already investigated the ability of EFT to address phobias or irrational fears. When Steve Wells, an Australian psychologist, and his associates decided to study EFT, they chose to evaluate its clinical effect on specific phobias to small animals that are often universally distressing to humans (mice, rates, and insects such as spiders and cockroaches). What is now being called the "The Wells Study" has been published in a leading peer-reviewed journal, The Journal of Clinical Psychology. In this study, Wells and his group compared the effects of EFT against those of a standard deep breathing technique that is often suggested to control fears, such as those associated with small animals and insects. In this study, Wells suggested a deep breathing method that included identical reminder phrases and most other parts of the standard EFT protocol. Intentionally, the only difference between these two techniques was the fact that during EFT the participants tapped on meridian end points, while in the comparison treatment the subjects did not tap at all.

The Wells Study supports the idea that deep breathing, by itself, is a beneficial in treatment of small animal phobia; in fact, it was so successful that its results made it difficult for EFT to surpass it in the clinical results of this study. Even so, the clinical results of EFT were better than this simple and effective breathing technique, as determined by four of five measures used to evaluate beneficial effects on the body, while the differences between these two techniques were markedly better and significantly higher in a statistic analysis.

In the most important test to assess effectiveness of these two techniques, in which a measurement was made to determine how close each participant would walk up to their feared animal object after treatment, it was those who were treated by EFT who sustained their loss of fear and sense of comfort with that animal than those treated only with deep breathing, when retested at six and nine months post test treatment in the research study. In fact, those individuals who were less fearful immediately after being treated with EFT continued to be less fearful even after a prolonged time during which EFT was not used again to support or sustain that benefit. Further, all 35 participants received only a single 30-minute EFT therapy session, or a single 30-minute diaphragmatic breathing session. Neither group was retrained, re-treated or re-exposed to their treatment method before undergoing the six and nine month re-testing. This suggests the beneficial effects of EFT to reduce phobic fears of small animals is remarkably long-lasting.

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