A Randomized, Controlled Trial of Wholistic Hybrid derived from Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing and Emotional Freedom Technique (WHEE) for self-treatment of pain, depression, and anxiety in chronic pain patients

Randomized trial👥 24 participants⚖️ vs. waitlistPreliminary✓ Source-checked📍 United States

In plain English. Twenty-four people with chronic pain, most also dealing with fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue, tried WHEE, a hybrid of EFT and a trauma-processing technique, for six weeks, compared to a waiting list. The treatment group saw less anxiety and depression than those waiting, and when the waitlist group later got the same treatment, their pain and depression eased too, though not every measure improved for every group. This is a genuinely small pilot trial, and the authors are candid that it's promising rather than conclusive.

What they found

people took part

WHEE significantly decreased anxiety (P < .05) [reported in source] and depression (P < .05) compared with the waitlist control group; the wait-list-turned-WHEE group later showed decreased pain severity (P < .05) and depression (P < .04) but not pain interference or anxiety.

How the study worked

Who took partchronic pain patients, 17 with chronic fatigue syndrome/fibromyalgia (n=24)

What they didIn a randomized controlled trial, participants were randomly assigned to receive tapping or a comparison condition, then measured and compared.

Compared withwaitlist

Measured withdepression, anxiety, pain severity, pain interference

💡 Where this could help

If this EFT-EMDR hybrid keeps easing pain, depression, and anxiety in people with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue — conditions notoriously hard to treat and often disbelieved by clinicians — it could mean patients get a self-directed tool that gives them some agency over symptoms that otherwise feel entirely out of their control. Being self-administered is precisely what supplies that agency: no waiting on a clinician's schedule to try it again when symptoms flare.

🔬 What to study next

Fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome are increasingly linked to central sensitization and inflammatory dysregulation, so a natural next step is testing whether WHEE's pain and mood gains track with inflammatory markers (CRP, IL-6) or with fMRI markers of central pain processing, like altered insula or anterior cingulate activity, which would show whether this hybrid technique recalibrates how the brain processes pain signals rather than simply distracting from them. A larger trial with actigraphy-tracked activity levels would clarify whether less pain translates into more actual daily movement.

The full record

Design	Randomized trial
Participants	24 people
Population	chronic pain patients, 17 with chronic fatigue syndrome/fibromyalgia
Comparison group	waitlist
Outcome measures	depression, anxiety, pain severity, pain interference
Journal	Journal of Evidence-Based Complementary & Alternative Medicine
Year	2016
Country	United States
Language	English
Method	EFT / tapping
Publication type	Study / trial
Verification	✓ Confirmed against the primary source

Read the original study →

Cite this study

APA

Benor, D., Rossiter-Thornton, J., & Toussaint, L. (2016). A Randomized, Controlled Trial of Wholistic Hybrid derived from Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing and Emotional Freedom Technique (WHEE) for self-treatment of pain, depression, and anxiety in chronic pain patients. Journal of Evidence-Based Complementary & Alternative Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1177/2156587216659400

This record is part of the Tapping Evidence Base — an openly-sourced, fully-referenced directory of the research on EFT/tapping. Explore more studies on Pain · Anxiety · Depression