Thought Field Therapy for patients with anxiety disorders

Randomized trial⚖️ vs. 10-week waitlist; cognitive therapy (CT)Moderate rigor✓ Source-checked📍 Norway

In plain English. This doctoral thesis pulls together a program of studies comparing Thought Field Therapy, a tapping-based approach, against both a waiting list and standard cognitive therapy for anxiety disorders including agoraphobia. TFT clearly beat waiting, and held its own against cognitive therapy on the specific measure of avoiding feared situations, though there was a slight, not statistically significant, edge for cognitive therapy overall. The author is upfront that the sample was too small to say for certain whether one treatment beats the other.

What they found

TFT showed better effect than a 10-week waitlist, with benefits continuing at 3 and 12 months; TFT and cognitive therapy showed no significant difference on the primary agoraphobic avoidance variable, though a nonsignificant trend favored CT overall.

How the study worked

Who took partpatients with anxiety disorders, including agoraphobia

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

Compared with10-week waitlist; cognitive therapy (CT)

Measured withAnxiety Disorders Interview Scale, agoraphobic avoidance

💡 Where this could help

Imagine someone with agoraphobia or another anxiety disorder stuck between doing nothing and a long wait for cognitive therapy. If tapping-based approaches continue to hold their own against cognitive therapy as this thesis suggests, it points toward a self-taught bridge option people could start using immediately, on their own, while waiting for a therapy slot to open up.

🔬 What to study next

Since TFT held its own against cognitive therapy on the primary avoidance measure, the next step is adding physiological anxiety measures — HRV, skin conductance, or cortisol during an in-vivo exposure challenge like approaching a feared situation — to see whether the two therapies reach equivalent scores via the same physiological pathway or different ones. A larger sample with longer follow-up than 12 months would also clarify whether the durability trend holds or eventually diverges from CT.

The full record

Design	Randomized trial
Population	patients with anxiety disorders, including agoraphobia
Comparison group	10-week waitlist; cognitive therapy (CT)
Outcome measures	Anxiety Disorders Interview Scale, agoraphobic avoidance
Journal	Doctoral thesis, University of Oslo
Year	2018
Country	Norway
Language	English
Method	Thought Field Therapy (related tapping method)
Publication type	Dissertation
Verification	✓ Confirmed against the primary source

Read the original study →

Cite this study

APA

Irgens, A. (2018). Thought Field Therapy for patients with anxiety disorders. Doctoral thesis, University of Oslo. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.18559.74403

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 Anxiety · Phobias